Andoni Iraola's Liverpool: A Start Full of Promise

Andoni Iraola has not been in the Liverpool job long, but he has already discovered one harsh truth about his new team: they can start like a title contender and finish like a side still in pre-season jog mode.

For the second friendly in succession, Liverpool raced into a two-goal lead and still contrived to lose. In Chicago, they were 2-0 up on Leeds and beaten 4-2. At Anfield on Sunday, 2-0 up on Monaco, beaten 3-2. The pattern is no longer a quirk. It is a problem.

A blistering start, then the drop

Iraola’s first public reading of the situation, after that defeat to Leeds on 2 August, was diplomatic. He called the loss “useful”, said he had “learned a lot of things” about his side. Managers often say that in July and August. It usually means: we’re miles off.

At Anfield, with the Premier League kick-off now just a fortnight away, the tone shifted. The Spaniard didn’t reach for the usual pre-season comfort blanket. He was blunt. Liverpool, he said, have “work to do” because they cannot yet sustain the level he demands over 90 minutes.

For half an hour against Monaco, as for the first half against Leeds, his ideas crackled through the team. Liverpool moved the ball with pace. They went straight and vertical rather than safe and sideways. The press bit high up the pitch. Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak looked sharp, aggressive, alive to every loose touch.

Those spells, brief as they were, have been the high watermark of Liverpool’s pre-season. They looked like a side that could suffocate opponents and thrill a crowd that has grown used to chaos and drama.

Then the changes came. And so did the collapse.

Iraola made nine substitutions against Leeds, 11 against Monaco. The drop-off was stark. Leeds scored four times in 25 minutes without reply. Monaco hit three unanswered in 44. The intensity that defined the opening phases vanished. The structure frayed. The press lost its bite, then its shape, then its purpose.

Friendly or not, Anfield felt the shift.

Bodies catching up, ideas racing ahead

There are caveats. Some of the squad are still playing catch-up after extended breaks following the World Cup. Others are not available at all. Conor Bradley, Hugo Ekitike and Giovanni Leoni are out for lengthy spells. That thins the options in a summer when Iraola is trying to overhaul the way Liverpool play.

Help is on the way. Uruguay defender Ronald Araujo is close to completing a season-long loan move from Barcelona, offering cover both at centre-back and right-back. Virgil van Dijk, asked about potential additions, did not hide the dressing room’s view.

“Let’s see what the next couple of weeks are going to bring,” the captain said. “Any quality we can add to the team will definitely be welcome so let’s see.”

But Iraola is not hiding behind absentees or the transfer market. With the players already at his disposal, he is adamant: the general fitness must improve or his football simply will not work.

Pablo de la Torre, one of Iraola’s key lieutenants at Bournemouth and previously their fitness coach, has followed him to Liverpool. The early sessions have been punishing. One player told BBC Sport he felt sick after the first few days under the new regime. Lose a drill in training and the forfeit is a full-pitch sprint there and back.

In Chicago, Milos Kerkez summed up the demands. Iraola, he said, wants them to “play one-on-one all over the pitch, to press high and to always be on the front foot”. That is not a philosophy you can fake on tired legs.

The Bournemouth blueprint, transplanted

If this all sounds familiar, it should. Iraola’s Bournemouth side last season were one of the Premier League’s most direct, aggressive outfits with the ball and without it. They ranked first for direct attacks, third for high turnovers. They dragged games into chaos and backed their fitness and organisation to survive it.

It did not click immediately. It took him 10 games to secure his first win at Bournemouth in 2023-24. That kind of run at Liverpool would be unthinkable. The scrutiny, the expectation, the fixture list – none of it will allow for a slow burn.

Yet Bournemouth’s transformation under him is precisely why Liverpool were prepared to take this gamble. His methods are demanding, but they are clear. The early signs on Merseyside show the same pattern: a team that plays at a frantic tempo in the opening stages, then runs out of fuel.

In an open training session in Chicago, Iraola’s voice cut through the noise. “Quicker, quicker,” he barked, over and over. The message was simple. The ball must move faster. The players must move faster. The whole game must be played on a higher plane.

Across four friendlies, there have been just enough flashes to see what he is building. A Liverpool that squeezes the pitch, that attacks in waves, that forces mistakes rather than waiting for them. A Liverpool that will entertain – and exhaust.

Time, and not much of it

The concern is not the style. It is the clock.

Two weeks before the Premier League begins, Iraola knows his team are not yet ready to deliver that intensity from first whistle to last. He admitted as much on Sunday. He has had less than a month with the full group. Some players, barely a week.

In Chicago he had already tried to temper expectations.

“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 how long it would take to fully see his style. “We will have to do this as quickly as possible.”

That is the challenge now. The ideas are bold. The glimpses are exciting. But in a club where patience is thin and ambitions are vast, how quickly can Iraola turn 30 electric minutes into 90?