Liverpool's Summer Plans: Retaining Mac Allister and Rebuilding the Squad
Andoni Iraola knows exactly what he wants from this Liverpool summer: keep Alexis Mac Allister, replace the stars who’ve gone, and do it all while reshaping a squad on the move in America.
The noise around Mac Allister is growing. Two years left on his deal, his name regularly tied to Madrid, his stock higher than ever after a World Cup final run with Argentina. Iraola, though, isn’t blinking.
“I think Alexis has been one of the best players of the club last year and has done a very good World Cup,” he said, underlining both the problem and the plan in a single breath. Big players attract big clubs. Liverpool intend to hold their ground.
“It is normal that other clubs want our best players, our good players, it always happens in other markets. But I want to, also as other clubs want, I want to keep my good players. Probably I'm looking forward more to signing new players than the ones we have here.”
That last line tells you where Liverpool really are. This is not a summer of calm maintenance. It’s a rebuild.
Holes in the XI
The scale of the task is obvious. Mohamed Salah, Andy Robertson and Ibrahima Konate have all gone, leaving gaps in three different lines of the team and stripping the dressing room of heavyweight experience. You don’t quietly replace that sort of core.
Iraola didn’t try to dress it up. He called the need for reinforcements “obvious”, an unusually frank admission at a club where transfer talk is usually wrapped in careful language. The priority is clear: a winger.
“I think it is difficult to say a number. When the market is open, you have to be always open to new options to improve the squad,” he said. “There are obvious situations where we need to sign players. Winger for example, we definitely need to sign a winger, but there are other situations where we will have to analyse what the market gives you, what is the cost, how we also see the players we have.”
The message is blunt. A wide forward is non-negotiable. Everything else gets filtered through price, availability and what emerges from within.
Balancing injuries and the market
That internal picture is complicated. Iraola’s squad is already stretched by injuries, and some of the players he trusts most are among those sidelined. That makes every decision in the final weeks of the window a moving target.
“We have some tricky positions where we have injured players that we trust, but it is still not the ideal situation, so it will depend on a lot of things,” he explained.
How quickly those players return to full training will shape the rest of the window. If they come back sharp, Liverpool can be more selective. If setbacks hit, the club may be forced into late moves they hadn’t planned.
Work in progress in America
All of this is unfolding thousands of miles from Anfield. Liverpool are currently in the United States on their Premier League pre-season tour, a crucial stretch for Iraola to drill his ideas into a squad that is changing around him.
New signings Jeremy Jacquet and Victor Munoz are being folded into the group, learning the demands of their new coach under the heat and travel of an American schedule. The tour doubles as an audition for the club’s younger players, who are being tested not just for fitness but for their technical ceiling and temperament.
Sunderland, Leeds United and Wrexham await on the fixture list, games that will offer clues about how quickly Iraola’s methods are bedding in and where the remaining fault lines lie.
Somewhere in that timeline, Mac Allister will walk back into the picture. After a long season capped by a World Cup final, he is set to rejoin the squad following the break, his return adding both quality and intrigue to a midfield already under the microscope.
Liverpool’s summer, then, turns on a delicate balance: hold onto a World Cup finalist coveted by Madrid, replace three major departures, find a winger, manage injuries and fast-track a new identity — all before the first competitive ball is kicked. The margins for error are thin.
