Virgil van Dijk believes Liverpool’s intensity is ‘definitely improving’ under Andoni Iraola.
Iraola admitted that his new charges were struggling play at a high level for more than 30 minutes after successive friendly losses to Leeds and Monaco.
The Reds surrendered two-goal leads on both occasions but held firm after taking an identical score line during Sunday’s final warm-up against Como.
And Van Dijk feels that the Basque’s methods are beginning to translate to the dressing room on the countdown to the new Premier League season.
He said: “What I see is that no team in world football can play full intensity for 90 minutes.
“At a certain point, you’re gonna have some moments where players – or we all – get to a position where we’re gonna be a bit tired.
“Then it’s down to us to make sure that we are compact and find the right moment to press again. I think we did that much better than we did the last game.
“Obviously everyone’s eager to go and to press and keep their intensity up but it’s a team game and we need everyone together in order to be able to do that.
“That goes in phases through the game. But if you do that at the right time, at the right moment, then you don’t need to run as much as we sometimes do.
“So that means at times when there is a throw in, a free kick, you have to maybe play it even quicker in order to keep the ball a little bit longer.
“But it’s a process and we’re working on that. Today there was definitely improvement in my opinion.
“Obviously when you play the previous two games, you are 2-0 up and you give it away, I think that’s something you can’t have happening again.
“I’m glad we did much better in that sense.”
Van Dijk partnered Jeremy Jacquet and Ronald Araujo in either half against the Serie A outfit as Iraola tests out his best centre-back combination options.
The Liverpool captain admits shared game time will be a key factor in him establishing strong partnerships with both players in their formative spells.
“I won’t say it’s the only way, but games are totally different than training,” added Van Dijk.
“Jeremy’s English is, I would say, a bit better than Ronald’s but at the end of the day we are all pretty good footballers.
“We can see and smell some moments on how to defend certain situations. But it’s pretty clear that you need to form a connection together and that takes a bit of time.
“In my opinion that’s absolutely normal but hopefully we can get that going as quickly as possible.”