Liverpool, who are already without strikers Roberto Firmino and Diogo Jota through injury, will miss their main summer signing for their Premier League games against Manchester United, Bournemouth and Newcastle. He will not be available until the Merseyside derby at Everton on September 3. Van Dijk said the 23-year-old, the first Liverpool player to be sacked for violent conduct during Jürgen Klopp’s tenure, has the support of his team-mates but must ensure the moment of madness does not happen again. “He has to control himself, for sure,” said the Liverpool defender. “He has to manage himself [and] he must know these things can happen, especially in the Premier League. “Obviously he was disappointed and probably with himself. But it’s a learning curve and we’ll always support him. He knows it shouldn’t happen again and hopes it will.” Núñez will undergo an extensive pre-season training program during his suspension, with Klopp planning to speak to the striker about his loss of composure. The striker hit two headers past Andersen in the 57th minute of the 1-1 draw and the Palace defender claimed Nunez was easily angered. Start your evenings with the Guardian’s view of the world of football Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Andersen said: “The whole game I sat very close to him, bothered him a lot and did well against him. I think that’s why he was mad at me. He hit me with the head, the first one, on a cross, and I told him he shouldn’t do that. I got angry with him. Then he did it again, which to me is really stupid, so it’s a clear red card.” Liverpool have failed to win their opening two Premier League games for the first time since 2012-13 and already trail Manchester City by four points. Van Dijk knows Liverpool will be an early write-off after their disappointing start but says he can ignore the outside noise and take encouragement from their performance against Palace. The Holland captain said: “I don’t want to blame different things. We want to play well but it’s funny because we played the Community Shield and won and everyone was saying a lot of other things and now we’ve drawn twice and people are going to write us off. But this is the outside world and we focus on what we can influence and that is our performance. “It was, especially with 10 men, a great performance. We pressured them, made them nervous, let them kick long balls. That’s something we have to learn from, move on from, but we want to win and we’ll look for it in the next game. “We put them under pressure, we took a lot of risk because we had to score the equalizer and we were hoping to get the winner. But we shouldn’t come with 10 men, it shouldn’t happen.” Luis Diaz scored a superb equalizer for Liverpool four minutes after Nunez was sent off and Van Dijk believes the Colombia international has plenty more to offer this season. “Luis is a fantastic player,” he said. “He’s something we need and he’s given us a special action and he can get a lot better.
