Jamie Carragher highlights essential Liverpool signing for January

Liverpool spent £450m in the summer but Carragher feels there is one glaring hole that must be addressed in January

Jamie Carragher has called on Liverpool to return to the transfer market in January despite coming off a summer of record spending.

Liverpool racked up a £450m outlay on players in the summer window, breaking their transfer record twice as they signed Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz, along with Hugo Ekitike, Jeremie Frimpong and Giovanni Leoni.

However, things have far from gone to plan for the defending Premier League champions this term, going on a run of six consecutive losses on English soil as their hopes of retaining the title took a seismic hit before Christmas.

Their defensive woes have not been helped by the unfortunate season-ending injury to Leoni, with Liverpool left to rue the collapsed signing of Crystal Palace centre-back Marc Guehi on deadline day.

Carragher believes this position remains their priority for improvement, insisting that the Reds need to act in January if they have any hope of saving their campaign.

"Liverpool need to spend in January, they need to buy a centre-back, they should have bought a centre-back in the summer," he told Sky Sports.

"They didn't, and then the one centre-back they did buy, Leoni, a young Italian player, looked fantastic in the game that he played, a Carabao Cup game. Unfortunately, he got an ACL injury, so we won't see him until next season.

"Liverpool are probably one injury away at centre-back from really derailing the season, so they have to go to the market in January.”

Liverpool’s defensive options were already left limited by the sale of Jarell Quansah to Bayer Leverkusen in July, with Leoni brought in as the Englishman’s replacement.

Jarell Quansah joined Bayer Leverkusen from Liverpool this summer (Getty)

But with Leoni out for the season, Liverpool now only have three first-team centre-backs available, with Joe Gomez acting as cover for starting pair Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate.

While conceding that Liverpool’s summer business did act to address some of the holes in the squad, Carragher is still left scratching his head over why the club didn’t use such a hefty sum of money to cover every base.

“In terms of spending the big money on Isak and Ekitike, who were both playing in the same position, both in the same summer, that was a little one where I was scratching my head a little bit,” he added.

"When you've spent that type of money, and it just becomes one or the other... It doesn't feel very Liverpool-like to me, or certainly the way we've conducted our transfer business in the last few years."