Should Liverpool be worried? Pre-season form, injuries and squad depth concerns for Andoni Iraola ahead of season opener | Football News

How much does pre-season mean? It depends who you ask.

Fans itching for the return of football after a summer forced into other past-times are left yearning to see new players in action and the tangible feel of momentum building ahead of the new season.

But at Anfield, that pre-season buzz has come to a crunching halt both on and off the pitch.

There is no empirical formula to the importance of pre-season results. Take last summer when Arsenal were beaten by Thomas Frank’s Tottenham in Hong Kong and lost at home to Villarreal in their penultimate friendly.

Within nine months, Frank was out of a job and they were crowned Premier League champions and were a penalty shoot-out away from winning the Champions League.

By that logic, Liverpool’s back-to-back two-goal collapses to Leeds and Monaco can be waved away. And there are positives for Andoni Iraola, with Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak – who endured testing first seasons on Merseyside – flourishing in pre-season. Both were on the scoresheet against Monaco on Sunday.

But there is a wider context growing and concerns already sufficient for the new head coach to publicly highlight with less than two weeks left before their season opener with Newcastle, live on Sky Sports on August 23.

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What those collapses do achieve is to shine a light on one of Liverpool’s most pressing concerns – fitness.

No side in the Premier League completed more sprints than Iraola’s Bournemouth last season and the high-pressing, physically intense football he demands is well-established.

Those requirements are perhaps even more keenly felt by a Liverpool squad which attempted the third-fewest pressures and second-fewest opposition-half high pressures last season.

Of course the club are, more generally, well-used to pressing football under Jurgen Klopp and many of his former players remain at Anfield. But this u-turn from his successor Arne Slot has a long way to go to be completely unpicked mentally and, more crucially, physically with the season less than a fortnight away.

After Monaco, Iraola made the stark admission his players may only have the capacity to implement his methods for as little as half an hour at a time at present. “We played well in the first half, especially the first 30 minutes, but right now probably we don’t have much more in terms of the level required to play like this,” he told club channels after the game.

It said as much about his players’ game time. Liverpool’s rivals are beginning to prioritise match cohesion over squad rotation, and Manchester City, Arsenal and Aston Villa – all fellow Champions League qualifiers – each left five or more outfield starters on for at least 75 minutes in their respective friendlies last weekend. Just three of Liverpool’s managed even an hour.

Even looking at Liverpool’s opening opponents, Newcastle gave six players at least 67 minutes against Valencia on Saturday, even with the enforced first-half withdrawal of Jacob Murphy due to injury.

The majority of the Reds’ line-up on Sunday could conceivably begin the season opener at St James’ Park, and it was those starters who raced into a 2-0 lead against Monaco and showed glimpses of what Iraola is trying to build.

But with Liverpool playing catch-up on their rivals’ fitness, the importance of squad depth will only become heightened – and here the head coach is instead presented with compounding issues.

While Chelsea’s depth allowed them to call on Nicolas Jackson, Geovany Quenda and Estevao from the bench to beat AC Milan 3-0 on Saturday, Liverpool were left with a centre-back pairing of Wataru Endo and Luke Chambers, who spent last season on loan at Charlton, for most of the second half against Monaco 24 hours later.

Victor Munoz and Milos Kerkez aside – both likely starters against Newcastle – Liverpool’s eight second-half additions managed just eight top-flight starts between them last season, and five of those came from 17-year-old Rio Ngumoha alone.

Iraola is not blind to his thin squad and within weeks of his appointment was already throwing down the gauntlet to the club that further reinforcements were needed, but it has not proven the catalyst he hoped.

He would have liked to avoid the departure of Michael Edwards last month and continuing rumours over Richard Hughes’ future, but that will provide little excuse if the season gets off to a slow start.

The surprise arrival of Ronald Araujo is more helpful but even with him on board Liverpool still only have two fit senior centre-backs. Conor Bradley remains “months” away from a return according to Iraola. It is perhaps a relief that at least Kostas Tsimikas and Milos Kerkez are both fit.

Further forward Liverpool need more than Victor Munoz to replace Mo Salah while Cody Gakpo is of interest to Tottenham and Curtis Jones sat out Sunday’s defeat entirely with Inter Milan still hopeful of signing the England midfielder.

After spending comfortably in excess of £400m last summer – even ignoring outgoings, still a gargantuan sum – it is reasonable to feel that Liverpool should not still find themselves short in multiple positions.

Not all of those are self-inflicted, and the issues at centre-back in particular owe more to an unfortunate succession of injuries to Jeremy Jacquet, Giovanni Leoni and now Joe Gomez than poor planning.

But with only Alexis Mac Allister to return from World Cup duty, if pre-season is serving Iraola any purpose it is to expose the holes in his squad. Those are most obvious both in wide-forward areas and midfield and time is running out to address them – especially if further outgoings do follow.

Few expect a repeat performance of Slot’s debut season or the Premier League trophy to be anywhere near Anfield come the end of next May.

But exactly how far off Liverpool will be, and how successfully Iraola can implement his style, will owe a lot to the comings and goings at Anfield in the three short weeks remaining of the transfer window.