Preston North End have completed the season-long loan of Liverpool’s Dutch centre half Sepp Van Den Berg.
The 20-year-old started his career in his homeland with PEC Zwolle, making 23 appearances, after coming through the ranks – his debut coming in 2018.
He was signed by the current champions of England in the summer of 2019 and has made four appearances for the Reds in domestic cup competitions in the last two seasons.
The Netherlands youth international has been given the No.2 shirt at Deepdale and completed his move to the club on deadline day.
Speaking after putting pen to paper he said: "I’m looking forward to it. I’m happy I’m here. I’m happy hopefully I can play a lot of games, I hopefully can achieve something good this season so I’m really looking forward to the season.
"I’ve had a look around and everything looks good. The people that I’ve met have been really nice to me so I’m really looking forward and the facilities are good so hopefully I can develop here very well."
Manager Alex Neil was pleased to add another player with potential to his squad, saying: "Sepp’s someone we’ve been looking at for the last couple of weeks anyway because I think we needed an extra number in there because obviously we lost Patrick so I think it’s a good deal for us.
"What he’ll bring for us is he’s quick, he’s good on the ball, obviously with Liverpool signing him at such a young age he needs to get out and get some first team football, so he’ll certainly give us some good competition for places in the centre back area. I think it’ll be a good move for both parties.
"He played first team football in the top flight when he was in Holland when he was 16/17 so to do that at that age is incredible really. Obviously Liverpool knew of his potential.
"I spoke to Gary O’Neil at length, he’s the U23s assistant coach there at Liverpool who I had as a player, and he told me all about Sepp so that really helped in terms of getting the background of the player, his mentality, what he’s like and their thoughts on him so that sort of sealed the deal for us really.