Andoni Iraola\u2019s Liverpool tenure has begun under strain after Joe Gomez was forced off inside 10 minutes of the Reds\u2019 preseason opener against Sunderland.<\/p>\n
The setback immediately tightened an already limited defensive pool, with Iraola making clear how quickly the situation turned. \u201cProbably the worst news has been straight away the injury of Joe,\u201d Iraola reflected after the game.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe were happy because we were kind of going through all the training without losing any player. Unluckily for us, straight away we\u2019ve lost Joe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gomez\u2019s departure left 18-year-old Ifeanyi Ndukwe to step in, with no other senior alternatives available on the day. That reality now leaves Iraola facing the rest of the preseason tour, and possibly the opening of the new season, with very little margin for error at the back.<\/p>\n
Liverpool\u2019s situation is complicated further by the absence of Virgil van Dijk, who has not travelled to the U.S. as he continues to rest after the World Cup. Giovanni Leoni is also still working through the final stages of recovery from an ACL injury, while summer signing J\u00e9r\u00e9my Jacquet was not included in the matchday squad on Saturday despite having been training with the group for weeks.<\/p>\n
Liverpool paid around $80 million (\u00a360 million) to secure Jacquet in early February, then allowed him to complete the season with Rennes. He played only two more times before a season-ending shoulder injury, and Iraola later said the 21-year-old is still not quite ready.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Jeremy, we decided to take it easy with him,\u201d Iraola explained. \u201cHe has been a lot of months without playing with a shoulder injury. So, I think we are going to take it easy with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe will play probably the last game of this U.S. tour and he will have time to have minutes. It\u2019s true that we were kind of happy but we\u2019ve lost one now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iraola had already described his squad as \u201cvery thin\u201d and pointed to issues at both right back and centre back. On paper, Liverpool list four senior centre backs, but the current availability picture tells a different story, with Leoni not yet back in team training and Jacquet still needing time to build toward full readiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Gomez\u2019s early injury has left Liverpool short at the back as Iraola manages a very thin squad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[1754,1836,1615],"class_list":["post-18045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","tag-2026-27-fixtures","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-andoni-iraola"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}