Liverpool's Pre-Season Struggles Under Andoni Iraola
Liverpool’s pre-season under Andoni Iraola was always going to be intense. No one expected it to be this fragile.
For the second friendly in a row, Liverpool raced into a two-goal lead and still contrived to lose. In Chicago, it was a 4-2 defeat to Leeds. At Anfield on Sunday, a 3-2 reverse against Monaco. Same pattern, same collapse, same warning.
Fast starts, brutal fades
The opening half against Leeds and the first half-hour against Monaco have been the clearest glimpse yet of Iraola’s blueprint. Liverpool moved the ball quickly, punched passes between the lines, went straight at defenders. They pressed high, hunted in packs, and looked like a side intent on suffocating opponents.
Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak, in particular, have carried an edge. Sharp in their movement, decisive around the box, they have offered a cutting threat that fits the new manager’s aggressive approach.
Then the legs go.
As changes arrive and the minutes tick by, Liverpool turn into a different team. Iraola made nine substitutions against Leeds, 11 against Monaco. The drop-off has been dramatic. Leeds scored four times in 25 unanswered minutes. Monaco hit three without reply in 44. The football that looked so vivid early on drains into something loose, open and vulnerable.
Two weeks from the start of the Premier League season, that is not a detail. It is the story.
Iraola’s blunt assessment
In Chicago on 2 August, Iraola tried to frame the Leeds defeat as a lesson. He called the 4-2 loss “useful”, saying he had “learned a lot of things” about his new side.
At Anfield, the tone hardened.
The Spaniard admitted Liverpool have “work to do” because they cannot sustain the level he demands over 90 minutes. He praised the first 30 minutes against Monaco, then cut straight to the heart of it: beyond that, his players “don’t have much more, in terms of the levels required to play like this”.
The message could not be clearer. The idea is right. The execution, for now, is not.
Part of that is timing. Some players are still climbing back to full fitness after a post-World Cup break. Others – Conor Bradley, Hugo Ekitike, Giovanni Leoni – are out for long spells. The squad is stretched before the real games even begin.
Fitness, demands and a punishing style
Iraola is not backing away from his principles. If anything, he is doubling down on them.
His Liverpool side, in a small sample of four games, have attacked matches at a furious tempo from the first whistle. That intensity has been just as visible in training. During an open session in Chicago, Iraola’s voice cut through the drills: “Quicker, quicker,” again and again.
One player told BBC Sport he felt physically sick after the opening sessions. Losing teams in training have been punished with full-pitch sprints there and back. The message: this style is non-negotiable, and it will be physically brutal.
Milos Kerkez summed it up in Chicago. 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 the football that took Bournemouth from relegation candidates to one of the Premier League’s most awkward opponents last season.
The numbers back that up. Bournemouth under Iraola ranked first in the league for direct attacks and third for high turnovers. His sides do not wait. They chase, they jump, they gamble.
That approach, though, comes at a cost. The physical base has to be exceptional. Right now, Liverpool’s isn’t.
Help incoming, patience required
Reinforcements are on the way. Uruguay defender Ronald Araujo is close to sealing a season-long loan from Barcelona, a move that would give Iraola a versatile option who can play both centre-back and right-back and handle large defensive spaces.
Virgil van Dijk, speaking after the Monaco defeat, did not hide the need for more. “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.”
Yet Iraola’s focus remains on the group already in front of him. He is adamant the overall fitness levels must rise if Liverpool are to live inside this demanding, front-foot identity. Pablo de la Torre, one of his assistants and formerly his fitness coach at Bournemouth, has followed him to Anfield to drive that change.
There is also the question of time. At Bournemouth, Iraola needed 10 league games to register his first win in the 2023-24 season. His ideas eventually took hold and transformed their campaign, but that early run would be unthinkable at Liverpool. The margin for patience at Anfield is far thinner.
Even so, Iraola has not tried to sell an illusion. In Chicago, asked whether it would take a while before Liverpool truly reflect his style, he was honest: he would love to say they will be “perfect” from day one, with “everyone in place”, but “probably it is not going to be like this”. The task, he added, is to get there “as quickly as possible”.
The vision is bold. The football, in bursts, is exhilarating. The gaps, right now, are glaring.
Liverpool know exactly how they want to play. The question, with the season closing in, is whether their bodies can catch up with their manager’s ambition in time.
