Liverpool's New Era Under Andoni Iraola: Fast Starts and Brutal Fades
Liverpool’s new era under Andoni Iraola has begun at full throttle – and is already blowing up in their faces.
For the second friendly in succession, Liverpool raced into a two-goal lead. For the second time, they collapsed. A 4-2 defeat to Leeds in Chicago was followed on Sunday by a 3-2 loss to Monaco at Anfield, and the pattern is starting to grate.
Fast starts, brutal fades
In Chicago on 2 August, Iraola framed the Leeds defeat as a learning exercise, insisting he had “learned a lot of things” about his new team. Against Monaco, two weeks out from the Premier League kick-off and back on home turf, the tone hardened. This time, he admitted Liverpool have “work to do” because they cannot sustain the level he demands for 90 minutes.
His assessment was blunt. Liverpool, he said, played well for the first half-hour but “they don’t have much more, in terms of the levels required to play like this”.
Those first phases, though, have offered a glimpse of what Iraola wants to build. Across the first half against Leeds and the opening 30 minutes against Monaco, Liverpool looked as sharp as they have at any point in pre-season. The ball zipped forward with purpose. The press bit high and hard. Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak looked like they had been here for years, not weeks.
Then the changes came – nine substitutions against Leeds, 11 against Monaco – and with them a different team, in every sense. The control vanished. The structure sagged. Leeds scored four times in 25 chaotic minutes. Monaco found three unanswered goals in 44. The contrast could hardly be starker.
Fitness, demands and a punishing style
Some mitigation exists. Several players are still climbing back towards full fitness after the World Cup and their summer breaks. Others are unavailable altogether: Conor Bradley, Hugo Ekitike and Giovanni Leoni are out for lengthy spells, thinning Iraola’s options just as he tries to imprint a demanding style.
Reinforcements are coming. Uruguay defender Ronald Araujo is close to completing a season-long loan from Barcelona, offering cover at both centre-back and right-back. It will help, but it will not solve the core issue the manager keeps circling back to: physical capacity.
With the squad currently in place, Iraola is adamant the general fitness has to rise if Liverpool are to play his way. Pablo de la Torre, one of his assistants and previously his fitness coach at Bournemouth, has followed him to Anfield with a clear brief – drag this group up to the red line and keep them there.
The early evidence suggests that process is anything but gentle. Across four pre-season games, Liverpool have played at a hectic tempo in the opening stages, mirroring the intensity seen during an open training session in Chicago. There, Iraola’s voice cut across the drills with a repeated demand: “quicker, quicker”.
One player told BBC Sport he felt sick after the first few sessions. The forfeit for losing in training has been simple and brutal: sprint to the far end of the pitch and back. No ball. No disguise. Just running.
Milos Kerkez summed it up in Chicago: Iraola 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 half-commit to. It either runs through the team, or it breaks them.
A known blueprint, a different level of scrutiny
Anyone who watched Iraola’s Bournemouth will recognise the blueprint. Last season, they ranked first in the Premier League for direct attacks and third for high turnovers. His sides go long, go early and hunt in packs. They are uncomfortable to play against and, when it clicks, compelling to watch.
He also knows what a slow start looks like. It took him 10 games to register his first win at Bournemouth in 2023-24. At Liverpool, a similar run would not just be criticised; it would be treated as a crisis. The margin for patience is slimmer. The expectations are heavier.
That is why his comments after Monaco jarred. For all the caveats – less than a month in the job, only a week or so with some players – hearing a Liverpool manager talk about his team not having “much more” in the tank after 30 minutes will set alarm bells ringing among supporters used to seeing their side run over opponents.
Yet the logic of what Iraola is trying to build is clear. This Liverpool will entertain. They already do in bursts. The task now is to stretch those bursts from 30 minutes to 60, then to 90, without the structure unravelling.
He is under no illusions about the timeline. Asked in Chicago whether it would take a while before his style fully appears, he replied: “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. We will have to do this as quickly as possible.”
Virgil van Dijk, the captain and the on-field barometer of any Liverpool side, chose his words carefully on Sunday. “Let’s see what the next couple of weeks are going to bring,” he said. “Any quality we can add to the team will definitely be welcome so let’s see.”
The quality of the ideas is not in doubt. The question, with the Premier League looming, is whether this squad can absorb Iraola’s demands fast enough – and run hard enough – to stop those two-goal leads from becoming an early-season habit.
