Why Liverpool have turned 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. Andoni Iraola overachieved at Bournemouth, but can he make the step up at Liverpool?

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.Liverpool could give testament to the potency of Iraola’s attacking football; the opening game of the Premier League season brought a 4-2 victory for the defending champions, but only after a scare. That Bayer Leverkusen, where Alonso completed an unbeaten season in the Bundesliga, had wanted Iraola shows how they can be interlinked.Liverpool have swapped Arne Slot for Iraola, a year after winning the Premier League (PA Archive)Indeed, rewind to 2023 and Leeds, embroiled in a relegation battle they would ultimately lose, sacked Jesse Marsch and turned their attention to Iraola, then of Rayo Vallecano, and Slot, still at Feyenoord.

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. The links between Liverpool and Bournemouth already include Milos Kerkez, who performed better for Iraola than Slot.