LONDON: Champions Liverpool leaped into transfer market action to strengthen central defence in the final hours of the window.

They have loaned Schalke’s Turkey central defender Ozan Kabak and bought Preston’s Ben Davies for £2m.

Overall the window saw the lowest number of January signings since transfer windows began with £70m the smallest spend since 2010.

Liverpool have an option to buy Kabak for £18m – with add-on clauses – at the end of the season, but do not need to activate it until June.

For now, they will pay a £1m loan fee now with the potential for an extra £500,000 based on games played and how they fare in the Champions League.

The Reds expect to be without Virgil van Dijk, Joel Matip and Joe Gomez until the end of the season because of injury while midfielder Fabinho, who has been standing in at the back, is also out.

Manager Jurgen Klopp named his 12th different centre-half partnership in 21 Premier League games for Sunday’s 3-1 win at West Ham, with midfielder Jordan Henderson alongside Nate Phillips.

On the arrival of Davies from Championship side Preston, Klopp said: “It’s probably clear that in a normal transfer window, without any issues, we would not look at Preston [to see] if there’s a player for us or something like that.

“Since our situation got clearer and clearer – the problems we had – when we saw him we got really excited about it and thought: ‘Wow.’

“We see the quality and we see the potential as well because he’s 25 and there’s a lot to come for him.”

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