Jamie Carragher has sounded a warning over Liverpool’s appointment of Andoni Iraola and the desire to find a manager in the mould of Jurgen Klopp.
The Reds fired Arne Slot at the end of last season, ruthlessly dismissing the Dutch coach a year on from winning the Premier League and quickly opting for the Basque coach.
Iraola’s Bournemouth secured sixth, ending a remarkable spell in charge of the Cherries by delivering European football.
But Carragher remains unconvinced, pointing out how the table was fluid after Bournemouth only achieved the same amount of wins (13) as Everton, who ultimately finished seven places lower in 13th.
The Liverpool legend underlined the difficulty in convincing an expensively-assembled squad to press and buy in to his philosophy.
Carragher noted in his Telegraph column: “Can Iraola turn Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak and Hugo Ekitike into a £310m pressing machine? Are they really that type of player?
“Iraola uses 4-4-2 more than the 4-3-3 of Slot and Klopp. Getting a tune out of £100m signings who expect to play is different from managing up-and-coming youngsters who treat Bournemouth as a stepping stone toward a bigger, higher-salaried club. Iraola may prove to be one of the great coaches of his era in Europe, whom Liverpool are recruiting at the perfect time, but he is a work in progress.
“This is rather like headhunting Klopp direct from Mainz, bypassing all the invaluable experience he gained at Borussia Dortmund, which meant by the time he landed in Liverpool in 2015 he was the finished product, and his presence was felt in the first press conference.”
Iraola claimed his experience in England should allow him to better instil his idea into the side, with “ intensity,” “aggressiveness” and “organisation” all fundamental parts of how he sees the Reds playing.
“I think I have the advantage that I’ve been here already three years in the Premier League and people for sure have seen Bournemouth play,” Iraola told the club’s website. “There are some things that obviously we need to change coaching Liverpool.
“But I wouldn’t like to lose our identity, the intensity, the aggressiveness, the organisation, certain things that I would like always to have in my team. Obviously you have to adapt to the players you have and it’s not the same, one club or the other, but there are fundamentals that I also think match quite well [with] what Liverpool has been during a lot of years that I think we can make it work.”
While Carragher also underlined how Iraola only managed one more victory against last season’s bottom three than the top three, while claiming “counter-attacking will not be a luxury at Anfield.”
He concluded: “This is the underlying reason why, in the absence of an established, marquee manager on the market, Liverpool could have kept Slot and retained my belief that changes to the squad had as much chance of working as a change in the dugout.”
