Martin O'Neill wants to be active in the January transfer window - to make sure the efforts of his current players aren't laid to waste.

O'Neill praised the 'colossal' effort of his stars so far this term and wants to add numbers to the squad to take some of the pressure off his claret and blue troops.

He said: "We're going to spend some of this month trying to strengthen the squad because the players have made a colossal effort and we wouldn't want to throw it away now.

"We've had a decent start. Strengthening will be easier said than done. If people ask am I going to be signing someone today, the answer is 'no'. But we'll do all we can.

"We're looking at a couple of things. It's well noted we've got the smallest squad in the Premier League.

"We've got six ever-presents and you would imagine if Scott Carson had been available against Liverpool, it might have been seven.

"We've got three, established goalkeepers in that group of 23 so we're down to 20, which includes Stephen O'Halloran and Moustapha Salifou who have never played a game for us, Patrik Berger and Isaiah Osbourne.

"So we need to try to address that if we can. I wouldn't estimate on numbers at this stage."