Why Liverpool are turning to Andoni Iraola to fix their biggest issue

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If it was Andoni Iraola’s excellence that took him to Liverpool, he and they almost had cause to rue it. And if that would have rendered Arne Slot’s dismissal more of a formality, it would have denied Iraola Champions League football at Anfield next season, assuming a man who has verbally agreed to take the job does so.As it is, the sight of Liverpool and Bournemouth side by side in the table showed they were underachievers and overachievers respectively.

When Mohamed Salah called for a return to the heavy-metal football Jurgen Klopp purveyed, in an implied criticism of Slot, he might have been imagining Iraola’s Bournemouth.Andoni Iraola overachieved at Bournemouth, but can he make the step up at Liverpool? But Liverpool’s sporting director Richard Hughes has twice shown a ruthlessness in jettisoning seemingly successful managers to bring in Iraola: first Gary O’Neil, who had kept Bournemouth up when most predicted relegation and then the Premier League winner Slot, in a way Liverpool accepted felt harsh.

Liverpool are set to swap Arne Slot for Andoni Iraola only a year after winning the Premier League (PA Archive)The links between Liverpool and Bournemouth already include Milos Kerkez, who performed better for Iraola than Slot. The Cherries could endure winless runs – their first nine games under Iraola, a spell of 11 last season – without the same kind of pressure such sequences would bring for Liverpool.Andoni Iraola led Bournemouth to the brink of the Champions League but he is yet to manage a campaign alongside European football (Getty)His high-speed football requires team on the training ground and Bournemouth only played 40 games last season.