“Get really aggressive. Get used to this, because we will do this every week…” That was Andoni Iraola’s opening message at Liverpool, and it matches the tone of his first days at the AXA Training Centre. Most first-team players and staff were due back on July 14, Tommy Elphick and Shaun Cooper are joining him from Bournemouth, and the first Premier League game is away at Newcastle on August 23.
Iraola's opening message
Pablo de la Torre, now part of the Liverpool staff, gave a clear picture of the new head coach’s style. “He (Iraola) is incredibly intelligent, leads by example, and has a rare emotional stability in such a visceral sport. From day one, you sense he's different - his ability to read the game and its needs is almost unique. He filters information so players can digest it easily and apply it every week,” de la Torre said.
That is backed up by the way he works in training. A Bournemouth source said: “Andoni likes to take all of the sessions and be in the thick of it as opposed to leaving it to others.” That hand-on approach matters because Iraola is not just asking for energy, he is trying to build a clearer game model and a team identity that players buy into.
The numbers from Liverpool's last season show why that pitch matters. They finished 5th in the Premier League, with a 17-9-12 record, and their last five league games read DLDLW. This was not a side far off the standard, but it was inconsistent enough to need more than a light cosmetic tweak.
The time pressure before Newcastle
The calendar is tight. Liverpool’s first league game comes away at Newcastle on August 23, and the squad will not be together in full for long before then. The club’s World Cup contingent includes eight players, but only Alexis Mac Allister and Victor Munoz were still at the tournament when the piece was written, while Dominik Szoboszlai, Joe Gomez, Giorgi Mamardashvili, Curtis Jones, Milos Kerkez, Jeremie Frimpong and Kostas Tsimikas are due back next week.
Liverpool also leave for their pre-season tour of the USA on July 20, a day after the World Cup final. Even with the European workload still on the horizon, the more immediate job is getting Iraola’s ideas into the team without wasting time. Liverpool were 3rd in their Champions League group with 18 points from 8 matches, so this is a squad that will need sharp preparation on more than one front.
The Bournemouth angle adds a little extra edge too. Liverpool’s trip there has been moved to Sunday, September 20 with a 4.30pm kick-off and live coverage on Sky Sports, which gives Iraola an early return to his old club. The bigger point, though, is that his message has been consistent from the start: aggression, repetition and a team that understands what it is trying to be.
If Liverpool carry that into the opening weeks, the first real test is already fixed. Newcastle away on August 23 will tell them plenty about how quickly Iraola’s ideas have landed.
Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 2 outlets. How we work →