Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has confessed he does not know whether the club will move to sign a new centre-back in the coming weeks.
Long-term injuries to both Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez have left Joel Matip as the only senior centre-back in the squad, but the 29-year-old has already endured a few injuries of his own and is currently sidelined with a hamstring problem.
The injury struggles have seen midfielders Fabinho and Jordan Henderson converted into defenders at times, while a lot of faith has been put in academy graduatesIsc Rhys Williams and Nat Phillips. Liverpool are still top of the table, but there have been plenty of calls for the Reds to add another senior defender to help them defend their title.
“We have solutions in the squad obviously but we struggled still with injuries,” Klopp said (via The Telegraph). “For most of the time it was with the centre-half position. It can happen like this when it starts and does not stop.
“We have solutions with the squad but if we can do something in the window, I don’t know. It is a very difficult transfer window as you can imagine. Not all of the clubs have real money. Doing something makes no sense. Doing the right thing makes sense. So far we have really liked what we have done.
“I liked Nat against Newcastle. He is a clever boy and knows about his ability and is using it and doing the job and helped us a lot. We have three centre-halves and if Rhys played, Nat would not have played for five or six weeks and needs to get this out of his system.”
Klopp also stressed his point to Sky Sports, insisting that Liverpool do not have the money needed to sign a new defender in January.
"I can't really say anything about [the financial impact of the COVID-19 outbreak], but you can imagine, six months ago we talked about how much all football clubs struggle and thank God we could keep going, and it helped all the clubs as well," Klopp added.
"But it's still not the time where you really just [throw money around], at least not for us. I don't know exactly how it is at other clubs, but we have to be really cautious and very serious, and so I don't know what we can and what we can't do."
Liverpool have been linked with a whole host of potential signings, with the likes of Schalke's Ozan Kabak and Lille's Sven Botman regularly named as targets for the Reds.
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Source : 90min