Liverpool's focus is only on themselves, not any of their Premier League rivals, according to Virgil van Dijk.

The Reds made an emphatic start to the new season on Sunday as goals from Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane (two) and Daniel Sturridge comfortably secured three points against West Ham United.

Ahead of the game, Jürgen Klopp spoke of the team’s own expectations being ‘the highest you can imagine’ as they try to build on successive top-four finishes.

Externally, Liverpool are heavily fancied to challenge reigning champions Manchester City – but Van Dijk insists they are blocking out such noise.

“We’ve seen the media writing about us as the new champions and stuff but we don’t really look at those things. We need to just focus game by game,” said the Dutchman.

“We want to do well. We want to achieve greater things so we need to be ready for any challenge, any battle that comes to us.

“We are very well prepared, we were looking forward to this game and I think everyone could see it.

“For us it is key that we don’t look too much at other teams. We need to look at ourselves and be ready every week for any opponent we face. That is key at the moment.”