Andoni Iraola's Tactical Challenge at Liverpool

Andoni Iraola knows exactly what he has walked into at Liverpool. You could hear it in the way he spoke to Steven Gerrard, and you could see it in every ragged sprint and broken transition of that 2-2 draw with Newcastle.

This is not his team yet. Not even close.

Caught Between Klopp and Slot

Iraola needed 10 games to taste victory in the Premier League with Bournemouth. At Liverpool, he'll have to wait at least one more outing after his side were held on opening day. The draw was generous. Newcastle ran harder, ran smarter, and exposed a Liverpool side that looked strangely stretched and disjointed for long spells.

The Spaniard has been dropping hints for weeks. On the club’s preseason tour in the United States, he questioned the squad’s “energy” levels – a pointed observation for a group coming out of the Arne Slot era. Now, speaking to Gerrard on TNT Sports, he went a step further and laid bare the tactical tug-of-war inside his own dressing room.

Asked whether he felt closer in style to Slot or Jurgen Klopp, Iraola didn’t hesitate.

“Probably closer to Jurgen, probably, I would say. But I loved a lot of the things that the team had with Arne also,” he said.

That’s the fault line running through this Liverpool side. One coach built them to dominate the ball, probe patiently, and suffocate low blocks. The new one wants the game to move quicker, sharper, more vertically – much closer to the chaos Klopp once embraced.

The Possession Problem

The numbers from the Newcastle game tell their own story. “There has to be a balance. Things are going to evolve differently because the first game we had 60, 61 percent of possession straight away,” Iraola noted.

Then came the line that should set alarm bells ringing at Anfield.

“Naturally, because the natural tendency of the players is towards that side, and I need to adapt also towards that side. ... But we also need to keep being vertical, keep attacking, keep taking sometimes some risks.”

Natural tendency. That’s the crux of it.

Dominik Szoboszlai, Ryan Gravenberch, Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez – all comfortable drifting high, hovering around the attacking third, waiting for the next phase of intricate possession. Under Slot, that was the brief: keep the ball, move the block, probe, repeat.

Under Iraola, that same instinct becomes a problem. When too many stay high and wide while Liverpool have the ball, the counterattacks the other way become longer, cleaner, and far more dangerous. A 35-year-old Virgil van Dijk and a raw Jeremy Jacquet were repeatedly left to defend big, open spaces against Newcastle. Both goals conceded grew out of that structural looseness.

This isn’t simply a matter of “more running” or “better pressing.” It’s muscle memory. Years of one style, followed by months of another, now being rewired again.

Fitness, Intensity and Time

The warning signs were already there in preseason. After facing Leeds in early August, Iraola didn’t hide his concerns.

"I think we played really good [in the] first half, especially the first 30 minutes, but right now probably we don't have much more in terms of the level required to play like this," he admitted. "Then they were much better in the second half.

"The problem is right now probably they don't have the energy for 90 minutes and they start to get tired. It will take time with them, we need more training with them."

That’s the reality he’s wrestling with: a squad conditioned for one rhythm, being asked to live at another. The manager wants them to be aggressive, vertical, and relentless. The players’ instincts pull them toward control, patience, and possession.

So he has two major holdovers from the Slot era to fix: the physical capacity to sustain his game, and the tactical reflex to stop defaulting to slow, high-possession football that leaves them exposed when it breaks down.

The draw with Newcastle was a snapshot of that transition – flashes of what Iraola wants, undermined by what this team still is. The question now is not whether he can change it. It’s how much turbulence Liverpool are willing to ride through while he does.