Five Fires Iraola Needs to Put Out Before the Season Even Starts

Pre-season at Liverpool has barely got going and already the scale of Andoni Iraola’s job is impossible to miss. This is not a squad that needs a tweak here and an addition there. It has been pulled apart by exits, disrupted by injuries and pointed in a new direction all at once, and the new head coach is facing decisions that would usually be spread across a full summer, not the opening fortnight of it.

A Bigger Rebuild Than Anyone Signed Up For

Arne Slot said before he left that Liverpool would go through another transition this summer, though he expected it to be a lighter one than the last. That has not held up. The list of departures has kept growing, and the combined effect of losing so many senior players at once has landed squarely on Iraola’s first transfer window. The debate now is not whether Liverpool need to strengthen. It is whether they can move fast enough to fix several important positions before the Premier League season starts.

The Right Wing Problem Nobody Has Solved Yet

Start with the most obvious gap. Replacing what Mohamed Salah gave this team was always going to be one of the hardest jobs in football, and even in a season many considered a step down for him, he still had a hand in twenty two goals. Add up everyone who left from the title winning squad and Liverpool are missing eighty one goal contributions in total.

Victor Munoz brings real promise but he is a left sided player by instinct, and that side is already crowded with Cody Gakpo and Rio Ngumoha. The continued interest in Bradley Barcola only reinforces the same point, since he too does his best work from the left. The imbalance could hardly be clearer. Iraola himself has more or less confirmed it, making the case publicly that his side needs another body on the right rather than a direct Salah replacement. Right now the options there, Harvey Elliott, Jeremie Frimpong, Federico Chiesa and the exciting teenager Josh Abe, all bring something different but none of them fully solves it. Frimpong is arguably more valuable at right back, Chiesa may end up playing more centrally, Elliott’s long term role is still unclear, and Abe, for all his promise, only just turned sixteen. Liverpool are heading into pre-season with their biggest attacking hole still open.

Defence and Midfield Need Just as Much Attention

The conversation tends to focus on the front line, but Liverpool’s defensive picture deserves just as much scrutiny. Jeremy Jacquet has arrived from Rennes with a good reputation, but throwing a young defender with little senior experience straight into Ibrahima Konate’s old role is a real gamble. Giovanni Leoni is still working his way back from a long term injury and can’t be rushed, Joe Gomez’s fitness history speaks for itself, and Virgil van Dijk has a huge amount of mileage in his legs after several demanding seasons. There isn’t much of a safety net there.

Right back is no clearer. Frimpong hasn’t fully nailed down the role, Conor Bradley is easing back after a serious injury, and there is a surprising lack of transfer chatter given how obvious the need looks from the outside.

Midfield adds another layer to all this. Liverpool still haven’t replaced the holding presence they lost when Fabinho left, and Ryan Gravenberch was pushed further forward last season, leaving gaps that opponents were quick to exploit. Whether Iraola goes back into that market before the window shuts could end up shaping how smoothly his ideas translate onto the pitch.

Our Take: A Rebuild Under Pressure, With Room to Get It Right

None of this arrives at a convenient time, but transitions like this can also be a chance to reset. Iraola takes over a squad that mixes promising young talent with senior players who can still set standards, and his job is to speed up the development of the former while adding enough proven quality to keep Liverpool competitive straight away, not in two years’ time.

He does not sound overwhelmed by it. He has been open about the scale of the task while insisting he trusts his own judgement and is ready for what comes next, and that mindset probably tells you as much about where Liverpool are as any of the individual transfer targets do.

Ultimately, pre-season is meant to be about fine tuning, but this summer looks a lot more like reconstruction. Iraola has walked into one of the biggest jobs in the sport at a time when expectations haven’t dropped even though the squad has changed enormously. Whether Liverpool are back in genuine title contention this season will probably come down less to tactical tweaks and much more to how well this rebuild gets finished in the next few weeks.