Andoni Iraola has offered a blunt reminder to Liverpool that the work of pre-season is still far from complete, even after a promising opening against Monaco suggested there is attacking potential in the squad.<\/p>\n
Liverpool were impressive for the first half-hour on Sunday, with the Florian Wirtz-Alexander Isak combination beginning to stand out, but they faded sharply after that. Iraola, whose Bournemouth sides have long been associated with intense pressing and relentless running, said the squad is not yet ready to sustain the style he wants across a full match.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe played a good first half, especially a good 30 minutes,\u201d Iraola reflected. \u201cRight now, we probably don\u2019t have much more, in terms of the levels required to play like this, and [Monaco] were much better in the second half. They deserved to turn around the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The match also brought the first pre-season appearances for Alisson, Virgil van Dijk and Cody Gakpo, while new signing V\u00edctor Mu\u00f1oz came off the bench for an unofficial debut in the closing half hour. Iraola said the issue is not a lack of effort, but a lack of stamina for the demands being placed on them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was their first game, and even the ones who are playing the second game, they had energy. The problem right now is they don\u2019t have the energy for 90 minutes,\u201d the boss said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey start to get tired, and it will take time for them. We need more training with them. But we can take a lot of positives, but also a lot of negatives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Dijk, now 35, remains without a settled partner at centre-back heading into the season. He started alongside teenager Ifeanyi Ndukwe, later played briefly with Wataru Endo, and then left the field after 60 minutes. Joe Gomez, J\u00e9r\u00e9my Jacquet and Giovanni Leoni were all unavailable through injury.<\/p>\n
There is some optimism that Jacquet could be involved against Como next weekend, either in a behind-closed-doors fixture or the public match at Anfield. Liverpool are also working on a loan move for Ronald Ara\u00fajo from Barcelona, but the situation is still developing rather than resolved.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely feels like a bit of a transition, for sure,\u201d Van Dijk told reporters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iraola praised Liverpool’s start against Monaco, but said the squad still lacks the stamina to sustain his demands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[1836,242,1980],"class_list":["post-18405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-injury","tag-pre-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18405","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=18405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}