Andoni Iraola's Liverpool appointment has been met with near-universal approval. That should give anyone paying attention a reason to pause.
The Bournemouth job he did was genuinely impressive — Europa League qualification on one of the thinnest budgets in the division. But the circumstances that made that possible at the Vitality Stadium are almost the exact opposite of what he'll face at Anfield. And Arne Slot, to his credit, already laid out the blueprint for why.
The weakness is on the record
Last October, after three consecutive defeats, Slot sat down and explained precisely what was happening to his Liverpool side. Teams had stopped trying to play out from the back. No more pressing triggers. No more transitions to exploit. Just long balls, low blocks, and the Reds left with the ball and no idea what to do with it.
"Teams played in a completely different way against us in the first half of last season than they did when we were top," Slot said. He saw it coming and couldn't fully fix it. Liverpool conceded a league-high 20 set-piece goals as opponents found other ways to hurt them once they'd neutralised the press.
The Bournemouth data tells a similar story. Under Iraola, the Cherries won just one of 13 matches last season when they held 55% possession or more. When teams gave them the ball and sat deep, they were largely toothless. That was manageable at Bournemouth — most sides below the top six were happy to come forward and get pressed. At Liverpool, with a Champions League place to defend and every mid-table team arriving with a pre-planned low block, that number gets tested every single week.
Bournemouth also recorded the highest set-piece xG faced across the entire Premier League last season, conceding 18 from those situations. Liverpool shipped 20. Two clubs, same vulnerability. That's not a coincidence — it's a pattern that opposition analysts will already be circling.
The case for giving him time
None of this makes the appointment wrong. Iraola is clearly a coach of substance — his evolution at Rayo Vallecano and then Bournemouth shows genuine tactical intelligence. His playing career at Athletic Club involved exactly the kind of positional discipline that top-level possession football demands. The capacity might be there. It just hasn't been tested at this level.
The managers who've openly pursued possession-based systems at elite clubs — Arteta being the obvious nearby example — have still spent years navigating the same low-block problem without a clean solution. Iraola is walking into it on day one, with a squad built around pressing triggers and a fanbase expecting Champions League football.
- Bournemouth: 1 win from 13 when holding 55%+ possession in 2024/25
- Bournemouth: highest set-piece xG faced in the Premier League last season
- Liverpool: conceded 20 set-piece goals in 2024/25 — most in the division
"I've learned to take things with less urgency or less dramatics," Iraola told The Independent last year. "Otherwise you go crazy." That temperament will be an asset. Whether it's enough to solve a tactical problem that beat Slot too is a different question entirely.
