Iraola's New Favorites: McConnell and Koumas Ready for Liverpool First-Team
Andoni Iraola walked away from a 4-2 pre-season defeat to Leeds United with more than just concerns about Liverpool’s defending. He left with a conviction: James McConnell and Lewis Koumas might be ready to crash the first-team door down.
The result stung. The performance of two academy products did not.
Iraola’s new favourites
According to journalist Alan Nixon, the new Liverpool manager has been “blown away” by McConnell and Koumas in his early days at the club. That’s not a throwaway line. Both players have spent the last few seasons living on the margins of Liverpool’s plans, shuffled out on loan, judged not quite ready for the demands of Anfield.
Now, under Iraola, the mood has changed.
McConnell, 21, has already tasted first-team football 13 times for Liverpool, but his pathway stalled. Arne Slot, in charge before Iraola’s arrival, decided the midfielder needed more seasoning and sent him to Ajax in the summer of 2025. A bold move, and a clear message: not yet.
Koumas, 20, has had an even more fractured route. Capable of playing wide or through the middle, the Wales international has just a single Liverpool appearance to his name. Instead, he has bounced through loan spells at Stoke City, Birmingham City and Hull City, trying to turn flashes of promise into something more permanent.
Slot never truly bought in. He used McConnell only four times and did not call on Koumas once during his tenure. For both players, Liverpool felt close yet distant, the stadium they belonged to but could not quite reach.
Iraola has seen something different.
Nixon reports that the Spaniard has “taken a shine” to the pair and is seriously considering promoting them into his first-team squad for next season rather than sending them out again. The clubs circling for loan deals may have to wait. In Iraola’s eyes, those stints away from Anfield have done their job.
“McConnell and attacker Koumas seem to have come on since their time away from Anfield and are now getting serious respect,” Nixon wrote. That respect, crucially, is coming from the man who picks the team.
For two players once farmed out “with varying degrees of success”, the dynamic has flipped. The loans were the audition. This pre-season is the callback.
Lessons in defeat
The 4-2 reverse against Leeds on Sunday underlined how much work Iraola still has in front of him. The goals conceded will bother him. The structure without the ball will bother him more. But the manager sounded almost grateful for the clarity the game provided.
“I think we learn a lot of things,” he said afterwards. Not a line to soften the scoreline, but a genuine assessment of a match that split into two very different stories.
“Obviously it’s not the result you want but I think [it was] probably the most useful friendly we played – in a positive way in the first half and in a negative way in the second half.”
Liverpool showed what they could be, then what they must avoid becoming. For a new manager, that contrast is gold. Iraola spoke about “good conclusions” and “solving some things” – code for adjustments that will be made quickly, and ruthlessly, before the real season starts.
This is where players like McConnell and Koumas come back into focus. Pre-season exposes flaws, but it also opens doors. When established names falter or fitness lags, hungry, sharp, tactically obedient youngsters can change a manager’s mind in a week.
First glimpses of the new era
The Leeds game also brought first outings of the summer for Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak and Ryan Gravenberch, three players expected to form part of the spine of Iraola’s Liverpool.
“I think they did really good,” the manager said. They each played 45 minutes, a gentle introduction, but even that told its own story.
“Obviously Florian and Alex, because they were playing in the first half, they had an easier game or a better game.” The intensity dipped and the structure frayed after the break, leaving Gravenberch to graft through the more chaotic period.
“Ryan, it was costly for him,” Iraola admitted. The Dutchman had to endure the tougher half, the one that laid bare Liverpool’s current shortcomings.
There was a brief scare when Jeremie Frimpong asked to come off, but Iraola moved quickly to calm any early-season panic. “Jeremie asked for the sub [but] I don’t think it’s an injury. It was just some overload and I hope he’s not injured in that way. I don’t think we’ve lost anyone.”
For a manager trying to install a high-energy, front-foot style, that matters. Every session counts. Every minute on the pitch, even in a ragged pre-season defeat, feeds into the larger plan.
A different kind of opportunity
This is the context in which McConnell and Koumas are suddenly being viewed not as loan assets, but as genuine options.
They are not walking into a settled, untouchable XI. They are stepping into a squad in transition, under a coach unafraid to lean on players who fit his ideas, not just his wage bill. If Iraola believes their time away has toughened them up and sharpened their decision-making, they may find themselves in the thick of it sooner than expected.
The academy has always been Liverpool’s heartbeat. The difference now is that two of its graduates, once parked on the fringes, have a manager who sees them as solutions rather than projects.
The defeat to Leeds will fade. The decisions Iraola makes on McConnell and Koumas in the coming weeks will not.
