Liverpool's Struggles Under Iraola: Intensity vs Endurance
Two games, two-goal leads, two defeats. Pre-season is supposed to soothe, to tease promise. Andoni Iraola’s Liverpool are doing the opposite.
In Chicago on 2 August, a 4-2 defeat by Leeds was brushed off as a lesson. The new manager talked about learning “a lot of things” from his team. At Anfield on Sunday, after Monaco turned a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 win, the tone hardened. With the Premier League season two weeks away, the Spaniard stopped dressing it up.
There is, in his words, “work to do”.
Fast starts, alarming fades
For half an hour against Monaco, Liverpool looked like a side already wired to Iraola’s demands. Just as they had for 45 minutes against Leeds. The ball fizzed. Passes went forward, not sideways. The press snapped into life. Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak played with the sharpness of men who already understand their roles.
That opening spell at Anfield might be the most coherent football Liverpool have produced all summer. Then the changes came. And the picture changed with them.
Iraola made nine substitutions against Leeds. Eleven against Monaco. Both times, the structure sagged and the intensity vanished. Leeds hit four in 25 minutes without reply in Chicago. Monaco needed 44 minutes to flip 0-2 into 3-2 at Anfield. Same pattern. Same collapse.
The message from the manager afterwards was blunt. His side, he said, played well for the first 30 minutes but “they don’t have much more, in terms of the levels required to play like this”. In other words: they can sprint with his ideas, but they cannot yet run a full game with them.
A squad still finding its legs
There are caveats, and they are real. Some players are only now returning to full work after the World Cup and a shortened off-season. Others are not available at all. Conor Bradley, Hugo Ekitike and Giovanni Leoni are out for extended spells, trimming options at a time when Iraola wants to drive up the physical load.
Help is on the way in defence. Uruguay international Ronald Araujo is close to completing a season-long loan from Barcelona, a move that would give Liverpool a defender capable of operating both at centre-back and right-back. It is the sort of signing that could alter not just the back line, but the way Iraola pushes his full-backs and presses from wide areas.
Virgil van Dijk, now the figurehead in the dressing room, did not hide the need for reinforcements. “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 main concern is not names on a teamsheet. It is the engine underneath it.
Iraola’s demands: high risk, high load
The Basque coach has not come to Anfield to tweak. He has come to impose. His Bournemouth side last season ranked first in the Premier League for direct attacks and third for high turnovers. They played on the front foot, often on the edge, and they did it by running harder and duelling more often than most.
That same blueprint is now being stamped onto Liverpool.
In Chicago, during an open training session, the soundtrack was relentless. “Quicker, quicker,” Iraola barked, again and again. One player admitted to BBC Sport he felt sick after the first few sessions. The forfeit for losing in training has been simple and unforgiving: sprint the length of the pitch and back.
Milos Kerkez summed it up neatly: Iraola wants his players to “play one-on-one all over the pitch, to press high and to always be on the front foot”. That sounds thrilling on paper. On grass, it demands extreme conditioning and absolute commitment in every duel.
To help deliver that, Iraola has brought trusted staff with him. Pablo de la Torre, previously his fitness coach at Bournemouth, has joined the Liverpool setup. The shift in physical expectations is obvious already. The question is whether the squad can catch up quickly enough.
Time, and not much of it
Iraola is not hiding behind excuses, but the timeline is tight. He has had less than a month with this group. Some players, even less. The evidence of four friendlies is that Liverpool can play in violent bursts of energy, then fall away sharply as legs tire and the bench empties.
The historical warning is there too. It took Iraola 10 league games to win his first match at Bournemouth in 2023-24. The club held its nerve, and were rewarded with a side that finished the season playing some of the most direct, aggressive football in the division. That kind of start at Liverpool would be unthinkable. The pressure, the expectation, the scrutiny – all amplified.
Iraola knows it. In Chicago, asked whether it would take time before his style truly appeared, he didn’t pretend otherwise. “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,” he admitted. “We will have to do this as quickly as possible.”
The signs are already clear. This Liverpool will be busy, brave and entertaining. They will attack space, chase mistakes, and look to turn every loose ball into a chance. Right now, though, they can only live that way for half an hour at a time.
The clock to the Premier League opener is ticking. The idea is in place. The intensity is there. The real test is whether Iraola can turn those 30 minutes into 90 before the season exposes every weakness.
