Why Iraola’s Backroom Bet Might Matter More Than the Scorelines
Pre-season tours get judged on the wrong things most years. A friendly win here, a shaky forty-five minutes there, and everyone rushes to draw conclusions that rarely survive the opening weekend of the real campaign. But watching how Andoni Iraola has used these three weeks in the United States, we think Liverpool fans should be paying attention to something other than the 4-2 win over Sunderland or the narrower 1-0 against Wrexham. It’s the way he’s talking about his own coaching staff and about the kids he’s promoted that tells you more about where this rebuild is heading.
Iraola closed out the trip, which wraps up against Leeds United in Chicago, by calling the whole exercise “really, really useful,” and it’s worth taking him at his word rather than filing it under standard managerial diplomacy. This wasn’t a commercial jolly dressed up as preparation. It was three weeks of close-quarters observation for a head coach still working out exactly who he’s inherited and who he can trust.
A manager still reading the room, and liking what he sees
There’s a version of this story where a new head coach spends a tour like this firefighting, patching over unfamiliar habits and hoping the group gels before August. That isn’t quite the picture Iraola painted. He talked about spending “a lot of time with the players, with the staff,” soaking up information, and about an “evolution” already under way between him and the squad. Read between the lines and what he’s describing is a group that’s meeting him roughly where he needs them to be, three weeks out from a ball that actually counts.
He was careful, too, not to pretend the picture is finished. Some first-team players are still to report back, and Iraola’s framing was pragmatic rather than anxious: every game between now and the opener is a chance to lock in standards so that the latecomers slot into something coherent rather than something still being built from scratch. That’s a manager thinking about structure, not just headcount, and it’s a distinction that matters for a squad still absorbing a coaching change midway through a difficult cycle.
It also suggests Iraola isn’t waiting for the international players to walk back through the door before he starts building habits. The group in front of him now, whoever they are, gets the same standards as the group he’ll have in September. That’s a small thing on paper, but it tends to be exactly the sort of detail that separates a coach who hits the ground running from one who spends the first two months of a season still finding his footing.
The kids didn’t just show up, they made a case
If there’s one theme from this tour that should genuinely excite the away end, it’s how bluntly Iraola credited the academy and U21 contingent. Asked what had stood out most, he didn’t hedge: “probably the performance of the young players.” Coming off a chaotic 2025-26 and a mid-cycle change in the dugout, that’s exactly the kind of internal reinforcement this club needed, and by his own account, several of these players have taken the opportunity rather than merely turned up for the photos.
What stood out in his description wasn’t just enthusiasm, it was specificity. He talked about academy and U21 players “winning duels” against senior Premier League opposition and contributing to “the collective idea,” which is coach-speak for players who understand shape and timing, not just players who run hard. Iraola was equally clear that not everyone stays: some drop back to the U21s, some go out on loan, and only a handful earn a place in his matchday plans. But his own words, that some “will stay with us because I think we will need them during the season,” suggest this isn’t a token gesture toward youth. It’s squad planning.
Trusting the staff he inherited
The most revealing part of Iraola’s tour, though, might be how he talked about Shaun Cooper and Tommy Elphick, two backroom figures who were already inside the building before he arrived. New head coaches don’t always keep the furniture, and plenty prefer to bring in their own people wholesale. Iraola has instead leaned on Cooper and Elphick as what he called “valuable intermediaries,” and his explanation for why was refreshingly candid: assistants are often closer to the players than the head coach ever can be, simply because of the distance the top job creates. Rather than treat that as a problem, he’s using it.
Elphick’s situation adds a layer worth dwelling on. Iraola described him as someone “living his dream” at Liverpool, and revealed that Elphick had chances to take Championship coaching jobs this summer but couldn’t walk away, in Iraola’s words, because “he’s been a big Liverpool fan.” That’s not the kind of detail a manager invents for effect. It points to a staff member who wanted this specific job at this specific club, which tends to show up in the work.
The bit that should stick with supporters
Iraola also let slip a smaller moment that says plenty about the size of what he’s taken on. Talking about meeting club legends around the training ground, he recalled a conversation involving Robbie Fowler and Ian Rush, with Rush’s reaction summed up in four words: “this is big.” It’s a throwaway line in a longer set of comments, but it’s also a reminder that even experienced coaching staff arriving at Liverpool feel the weight of the badge before a ball is kicked in anger.
None of this guarantees results once the fixtures start counting. Pre-season goodwill has a short shelf life if the performances don’t follow in September, and Liverpool fans have watched enough promising tours evaporate by October to know better than to get carried away by a few weeks in American heat. But a head coach who trusts the staff he inherited, promotes kids on merit rather than necessity, and still seems genuinely struck by the scale of the job, that’s a reasonable foundation to build a season on.
What we’d take from all of this isn’t certainty, it’s a sense of how Iraola operates when nobody’s forcing his hand. He didn’t overhaul the backroom staff for the sake of it, and he didn’t throw academy kids into first-team minutes purely for headlines. Both calls look like they were made on evidence gathered over three weeks of close observation, which is a far steadier way to start a Liverpool tenure than most of his predecessors managed. We’ll find out soon enough whether it translates to points, but as first impressions go, this one is worth taking seriously.