Iraola casts doubt on Isak and Gakpo facing Man City

Below is a summary of the full article. Click here for the full version from RTE or go back to LFC Live.

"I think Alex Isak and Cody Gakpo both have had to leave the national teams with injuries," Iraola told beIN SPORTS. "I think we need to be very, very good if we want to beat City because they've been especially offensively scoring a lot of goals lately.

But I think also we've shown good defensive improvements lately and I hope we can defend the threats that they have and also hurt them on the other side." The international break will have done little to help the consistency Iraola needs as he tries to get a squad which hugely underperformed last season to successfully adopt his methods. "I think the goal is quite clear and I think everyone understands what we are trying to build," he said.

"For example, I think in Newcastle (a 2-2 draw) we played a good game but probably we conceded two goals in transition (and) you want to control a little bit more of the games. "I think lately we've been controlling the games much more but we lacked a little bit (of) this offensive fluidity that we had in the first game.