Andoni Iraola's Liverpool: Pre-Season Insights and Challenges
Andoni Iraola cut a different figure this time.
In Chicago, after a 4-2 defeat by Leeds, the new Liverpool manager had worn the pre-season smile, calling the collapse “useful” and insisting he had “learned a lot of things” about his players. At Anfield on Sunday, after watching Monaco come from two down to win 3-2, the mask slipped a little.
Two weeks out from the Premier League kick-off, the verdict was blunt: Liverpool have “work to do”.
A blistering start, a brutal fade
For half an hour, Anfield saw exactly what Iraola has in mind. Liverpool were sharp, aggressive, on the front foot. The ball fizzed through midfield, the press snapped into life, and Monaco were pushed back towards their own box.
It mirrored the first half against Leeds in Chicago – the two best spells of Liverpool’s pre-season so far. In both, the football had a clear identity: pace in possession, direct running, and a suffocating press. Florian Wirtz looked like the creative hub they signed, Alexander Isak moved with the confidence of a centre-forward who knows he belongs at this level.
Then the changes came. And the drop-off was stark.
Iraola made nine substitutions against Leeds, 11 against Monaco. In both games, Liverpool went from controlled and dynamic to ragged and vulnerable. Leeds scored four times in 25 minutes without reply. Monaco hit three unanswered goals in 44 minutes. Two friendlies, two blown two-goal leads, two defeats.
Pre-season always comes with caveats – heavy legs, mixed line-ups, players at different stages of fitness – but the pattern is too clear for Iraola to ignore.
“They don’t have much more, in terms of the levels required to play like this,” he admitted of his side’s ability to sustain that opening intensity.
Fitness, demands and a punishing style
The message from the new regime has been consistent: if Liverpool are going to play Iraola’s way, they will have to suffer.
Some of the squad are still climbing back towards full fitness after extended breaks following the World Cup. Others, like Conor Bradley, Hugo Ekitike and Giovanni Leoni, are out for lengthy spells. The workload is landing on a group that is not yet physically ready for the demands being placed upon it.
Those demands are non-negotiable. Iraola’s Bournemouth team led the Premier League last season for direct attacks and ranked third for high turnovers. His football is built on risk, aggression and relentless running. There is no halfway version.
The early sessions at Liverpool have underlined that. During an open training session in Chicago, his voice cut across the drills with the same instruction again and again: “Quicker, quicker.” One player told BBC Sport he felt sick after the first few days under the new staff. Losing in training has come with a simple punishment – sprint the length of the pitch and back.
Milos Kerkez spelled it out in Chicago: Iraola wants his players to “play one-on-one all over the pitch, to press high and to always be on the front foot”. That sounds exhilarating when the legs are fresh. It looks very different in the 70th minute when they are not.
Little wonder Iraola is obsessed with conditioning. Pablo de la Torre, who has followed him from Bournemouth to Anfield, is not just another assistant; he was the fitness coach on the south coast, and his role now is central to making this style possible.
Recruitment and reality
The club are trying to help him. Uruguay defender Ronald Araujo is close to completing a season-long loan from Barcelona, a move that would give Iraola a powerful, versatile option at both centre-back and right-back. It will not solve every problem, but it fits the profile: athletic, aggressive, comfortable defending big spaces.
Virgil van Dijk, now captain of this evolving side, knows more reinforcements would be useful.
“Let’s see what the next couple of weeks are going to bring,” he said on Sunday. “Any quality we can add to the team will definitely be welcome so let’s see.”
The emphasis, though, keeps returning to the players already in the building. Iraola has had less than a month with this group, and only a week or so with some of them. He is trying to install one of the most physically demanding systems in the league in a fraction of the time he had at Bournemouth.
There, it took him 10 matches to register a first win in the 2023-24 season. Bournemouth stuck with him and were rewarded with a vibrant, fearless side. At Liverpool, the runway is shorter and the expectations far higher. A similar start would ignite a very different conversation.
Time, and not much of it
Iraola is not hiding from the challenge. He knows what the football should look like. He has already shown it in flashes – that opening half in Chicago, the first 30 minutes at Anfield. The problem is everything that comes after.
“I would like to say, no, on the first day, we are going to be perfect, everyone will be in place, but probably it is not going to be like this,” he said when asked if it would take time for his ideas to bed in. “We will have to do this as quickly as possible.”
There is the tension of Liverpool’s summer in a single sentence. The style is clear, the work is ferocious, the intent is obvious. The clock is just as obvious.
Two weeks remain until the real thing starts. The question now is not whether Iraola’s Liverpool will be entertaining. The evidence already says they will. The question is whether they can find the legs, and the resilience, to make that thrilling opening half-hour last long enough to matter.
