Football pundit Shay Given has said that Liverpool should have signed another defender after it became clear that they were going to fail in their aims to sign Virgil van Dijk from Southampton during the summer.
The Dutch international Van dijk was long linked with a move to their Reds and he reportedly also handed in a transfer request to the Saints to try and force through a move.
As the 26-year-old van Dijk had signed a new contract at St Mary’s just a year earlier, Southampton ended up refusing to sell.
Shay Given has now emphasized that they should have recruited another defender after it became apparent that they would not sign van Dijk.
He said, “It was obviously well-documented they wanted Van Dijk in the summer. He didn’t arrive for whatever reason but you would have thought a club the size of Liverpool would have had a plan B.
“Obviously Van Dijk on the last day, we kind of knew that it wasn’t going to happen. You think a club of that size would say ‘well we can’t get him, we tried everything’, so there should be a Plan B, there should be another centre-half in Europe or world football that they could get to their football club.”
Jurgen Klopp’s sides defensive problems have been clearly exposed already during the early parts of this season particularly during their 3-3 draw with Watford, 5-0 defeat to Manchester City and 1-1 draw with Burnley.
