Klopp set for January swoop for Defenders

Jurgen Klopp admitted Liverpool may need to think about
turning to the January transfer market to solve their lack of
personnel in defence.

Mamadou Sakho was ruled out of the first-leg of the club’s
League Cup semi-final victory over Stoke on Tuesday night
with a minor knee injury.

The manager revealed the Frenchman has suffered a
reaction to the late tackle by Sunderland’s Jermain Lens a
week ago.

Then, 34 minutes into the encounter at the Britannia, Dejan
Lovren had to be replaced due to a hamstring concern. That
left Liverpool with a centre-back pairing of 34-year-old Kolo
Toure and midfielder Lucas.

The duo performed brilliantly against Mark Hughes’ men, but at the end of the game, the Ivorian pulled up with cramp.
With Martin Skrtel already hamstrung, Klopp currently has
no available centre-backs.

Asked if he’d look to fix that in the winter window, the 48-
year-old said: “In this moment, with no centre-back fit, I
think it’s a situation where you have to think about that.

“Two weeks ago, we had three centre-backs, which is a
good situation. When Liverpool started we had five,
including Joe Gomez. Now we have nil.

“We could have waved the white flag, and said ‘okay, no
team against Stoke. We need this week to prepare for the
game against Arsenal so play someone else against Stoke
and against Exeter.’

“That’s not possible, so we tried everything for this game
and the boys did well.”