Why We’re Backing Iraola’s Patience at Full-Back, For Now

Liverpool decided not to bring in another full-back this summer, and with Conor Bradley still working his way back from a serious knee injury, that call has been picked apart all over again. Jamie Redknapp weighed in on Sky Sports this week, and while pundit opinions come and go, this one is worth taking seriously because it cuts to the heart of how Andoni Iraola wants to build his squad.

It is easy to reduce this to a binary: sign a full-back or do not. Liverpool’s calculation looks more layered than that. It involves squad development, minutes on the pitch for a promising academy product, and how Iraola wants his team to play through matches, not just who happens to be fit in September.

The case for staying patient

Redknapp’s argument is straightforward. Bring in a specialist right-back now and you risk stalling Bradley’s progress the moment he is fit again. He pointed out that Liverpool have to be mindful of who they already have out injured, and that spending big on a short-term fix could create a longer-term headache once Bradley returns to full training. It is not a flashy take, but it is a sensible one, and it lines up with how modern recruitment departments tend to think: plan for eighteen months, not eighteen days.

He was more pointed on the players currently filling in. Frimpong, in his view, was never really a right-back to begin with. He arrived as a wing-back and still looks like one, more comfortable bombing forward than defending in isolation. That mismatch shows up most clearly in the moments when Liverpool need someone to simply defend a cross or track a runner in behind, rather than overlap and create. Kerkez, meanwhile, has not yet delivered the kind of form that would end the debate outright, though Redknapp did note that having Iraola in the building, a manager who knows him well from Bournemouth, gives Liverpool a reasonable case for optimism.

Frimpong and Kerkez are carrying more than they signed up for

Here is where we think the conversation gets interesting. Frimpong’s discomfort at right-back is not really a mystery. Ask any attacking full-back to defend one-on-one in a deeper role than they are used to and you will see growing pains, and that is exactly what Liverpool are seeing. It does not mean he cannot adapt, but it does mean Iraola has a coaching job on his hands, not just a selection headache.

Kerkez is a slightly different case. He and Iraola worked together previously, and that familiarity should, in theory, speed up his settling-in period at Anfield. Kostas Tsimikas returning from his loan spell at Roma adds depth on the left without forcing Liverpool into the market, which is presumably part of why the club feels comfortable holding its nerve.

Liverpool’s full-back options this season effectively come down to four names: Bradley, Frimpong, Kerkez and Tsimikas. That is not an unusually thin pool by Premier League standards, but it leaves little room for injuries to compound, which is precisely the situation the club finds itself in with Bradley still sidelined.

The knock-on risk is tactical as much as it is about individual form. When a squad is short of specialist cover, managers get pushed into improvisation, and Liverpool have already leaned on midfielders filling in defensively this season. Every time that happens, the pressure on this decision ratchets up another notch.

Where we land on the gamble

Our honest view is that Liverpool’s logic holds up better than the criticism suggests, but only if results stay competitive while the club waits things out. Protecting Bradley’s pathway is the right long-term call. Nobody wants to see a promising academy product blocked because of a reactive signing made under pressure from outside the club. That much is easy to defend. Supporters have seen this kind of calculated patience before, and more often than not it has been vindicated once the coaching staff had time to work with what they had.

What is harder to defend is asking supporters to simply trust the process while Frimpong looks unconvincing in a role that does not suit him and Kerkez searches for consistency. Iraola’s coaching will matter enormously here, arguably more than in most other areas of the squad, because there is no safety net coming in from outside if things do not click quickly.

So we are cautiously on board. This looks like a calculated risk rather than negligence, and the reasoning behind it makes sense on paper. But patience only stays a virtue for as long as performances hold up, and if the full-back positions keep costing points through autumn, the questions Redknapp raised on Sky Sports will get a lot louder around Anfield.