Andoni Iraola's Challenge: Breaking Liverpool's Costly Contract Habit

Andoni Iraola hasn’t even taken charge of a game at Anfield, yet the first storm of his Liverpool reign is already forming. It isn’t tactical. It isn’t about style. It’s about contracts – and a familiar, costly habit the club has failed to kick.

The Basque coach arrived on Thursday on a two-year deal, rewarded for an impressive three-year spell at Bournemouth and handed the keys to a squad that only recently scaled the Premier League summit under Arne Slot. Slot’s title win was followed by a grim second season and the inevitable sacking. Iraola inherits the fallout from that, but also something more insidious: a squad drifting towards free agency.

One major piece has already gone. Ibrahima Konate, a mainstay under Slot, has walked away for nothing. Liverpool confirmed last week that the French defender would leave at the end of his deal this summer after negotiations broke down. Konate then drew a clear line under his Anfield career on social media the following day. No fee, no leverage, no replacement money banked.

That should have been the warning siren. Instead, it feels like the prelude.

Because over the next 12 months, six more first‑team players are heading into the final year of their contracts: captain Virgil van Dijk, Curtis Jones, Alisson Becker, Joe Gomez, Wataru Endo and Stefan Bajcetic. If none of them sign fresh terms, all six will be able to walk away for free next summer.

Nightmare Scenario

For a new head coach trying to build something coherent, that is a nightmare scenario. How do you plan a defensive structure when your captain and your goalkeeper might both be gone in a year? How do you shape a midfield when two of its key profiles, Endo and Bajcetic, could be counting down the days?

The financial hit is just as stark. The combined transfer value of that group is listed at around £74 million by transfermarkt. Lose them all for nothing and that figure simply evaporates. No reinvestment, no rolling of assets into the next phase of the squad. Just a hole on the balance sheet and a gap on the teamsheet.

Liverpool have been here before. Too often.

Players have been allowed to edge towards the end of their contracts, their market value draining away with every month of uncertainty. Sell too late and you accept a cut‑price fee. Wait longer and you get nothing at all. Konate is only the latest example of a pattern that has frustrated supporters and weakened the club’s hand in the market.

Last season underlined the problem. The futures of Van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold hovered over the campaign like a cloud. Every press conference, every international break, every dip in form came with the same questions: are they staying, are they going, who’s next?

It became an unwelcome sideshow. On the pitch, Liverpool chased trophies. Off it, the fanbase obsessed over expiring deals and potential exits.

The eventual outcome did little to soothe the mood. Alexander-Arnold left in the summer of 2025, a departure that enraged large sections of the Anfield support. Liverpool at least salvaged a fee because Real Madrid moved before he hit free agency, but it was a sliver of consolation. This was a homegrown star, a symbol of the club’s identity, allowed to run his contract down to the point where Liverpool had almost no negotiating power left.

Salah and Van Dijk stayed, though not on the sort of long-term commitments that give a club real security. Both signed short-term contracts, and both did so from a position of strength. They held the leverage. Liverpool blinked.

Now, the cycle threatens to repeat itself. Van Dijk is back on the list of looming expiries, this time alongside Alisson, Jones, Gomez, Endo and Bajcetic. Six different profiles, six different cases, one central problem: the clock is ticking and the club has to decide who forms the core of Iraola’s Liverpool and who becomes a saleable asset.

Decisions Ahead

This is where the new head coach’s job stretches beyond the training pitch. He must sit down with the Anfield hierarchy and make sharp, sometimes ruthless calls. Which players can he not afford to lose, even at the risk of seeing them depart for free down the line? Which ones should be cashed in now, while they still carry meaningful value?

Every choice carries risk. Keep too many and you may watch tens of millions disappear when contracts expire. Sell too many and you rip out the spine of a squad still expected to compete at the top of the Premier League and in Europe.

Iraola has built his reputation on clarity and conviction. He will need both as he steps into a club that has been here, and been burned, before. Liverpool cannot afford another era defined by stars walking away for nothing.

The new man in the dugout has a pressing question to answer before a ball is even kicked: is this the summer Liverpool finally break their contract habit, or the one that locks them into another costly cycle?