Alisson made little attempt to sugarcoat Liverpool’s unbeaten start to the season under Andoni Iraola when analysing the draw against Fulham with the club’s in-house media. We need to aim for big things.” Big things are the target and big things are expected from a Liverpool side containing three £100m-plus forwards. But the learning curve under the new head coach is proving challenging.
As it is for the new head coach, too. Big decisions appear unavoidable. When Iraola faces his former club Bournemouth on Sunday for the first time since ending his impressive three-year reign there last season, he is likely to know more about the opposition players than his own.
It’s going to be strange for me.” Iraola spent more than two hours debriefing Marco Rose, his successor at the Vitality Stadium, on the Bournemouth squad and staff in June. They had time for a smooth handover because, as Iraola put it, his exit from the club “was so clean” and he decided to stay on the south coast while his two young children finished school. Whether they discussed how Bournemouth became the draw specialists of last season remains private.
No coach or manager oversaw more stalemates in the Premier League last season than Iraola, whose Bournemouth team were held a remarkable 18 times. It was a league high by a comfortable distance. Ten came at the Vitality, 52.63% of their home league fixtures, and Bournemouth ultimately missed out on the fifth and final Champions League spot by three points from a Liverpool team that stumbled over the line under Arne Slot.
Over the course of his last 38 league games, Iraola has drawn 21 times. That is a joint record in the Premier League alongside Mark Hughes, whose identical run across 38 games came with Manchester City and Fulham between October 2009 and February 2011. Hughes had a seven-month break between those two jobs, however, making Iraola the first Premier League coach to draw 21 of 38 matches in a continuous sequence.
The sample size at Liverpool is too small for conclusions, admittedly. Iraola is also still searching for balance and assessing his options, as changes in both full-back positions and central midfield have demonstrated regularly. But the 44-year-old knows full well that a draw with Liverpool is far more damaging to his current employer’s aspirations than his previous one.
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