Virgil van Dijk presumably still enjoys being name-checked as the best central defender in the business, but he must have got used to it long ago. One former Liverpool center-back is far less accustomed to being mentioned in these conversations — but he has been brought up by one of the Premier League's top strikers in highly unlikely circumstances.

It all started like your standard media interview. Chris Wood sat down with Optus Sport and was asked about the toughest opponents he had faced.

Joint-fourth in the race for the Premier League Golden Boot (a certain Mohamed Salah is leading the way), and having netted against Arne Slot's side recently, Wood's opinion certainly carries some weight. He became the latest to acknowledge the difficulties of playing against Van Dijk.

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"I always say Van Dijk at the moment is probably the best defender you've come up against," admitted Wood. That's when things took an unexpected turn.

Wood is earning by far the most acclaim of his own career at the minute as he spearheads Nottingham Forest in an unlikely title push. It's easy to forget he has been in and around the Premier League for a long time, and the 33-year-old decided to reference a player who departed the division eight years ago.

"Skrtel at Liverpool as well, back in the day," Wood reminisced. "He was one of the defenders that just never let you rest.

"Always pinching you and prodding you, and just being on your nerves, and I think he kind of put strikers off a bit in a sense like that. So yeah, he was one of the tougher ones, and he got stuck in."

A potentially odd choice, you might think, but not completely inexplicable. Martin Skrtel was certainly a handful — he has earned a sort of cult status at Liverpool, as much for his antics from attacking set pieces as anything else. He famously notched seven Premier League goals from center-back in the chaotic 2013/14 season.

But for Wood, in particular, to have named Skrtel is particularly baffling. While the New Zealander has been on the scene for a while, he spent much of the early 2010s in the Championship — his impression of the defender has been formed from a remarkably small number of encounters.

In fact, it seems Wood only ever faced Skrtel at Liverpool once. That was a grand total of eight minutes in the 2010/11 season, when he came on for West Brom in a 1-0 defeat.

At the international level, the pair also met at the 2010 World Cup. But again, Wood was only summoned off the bench, playing less than 20 minutes against Skrtel.

Clearly, though, this half-hour or so across two matches has left an indelible mark on him. I didn't expect to see anyone comparing Van Dijk and Skrtel when I woke up this morning, but the fact that it's Wood makes this story delightfully weird.