EXCLUSIVE: Liverpool legend Ray Houghton on the pressures Andoni Iraola will face next season and the players that he can get more out of heading into the new campaign
19:13, 05 Jul 2026
Liverpool head coach Andoni Iraola.
Liverpool head coach Andoni Iraola.(Image: Nikki Dyer - Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Liverpool legend Ray Houghton says Andoni Iraola will be under pressure to perform at Anfield from day one after he succeeded Arne Slot this summer.
Iraola arrives as a highly-rated coach from Bournemouth, but he has no experience at the top level as a manager and has never overseen a Champions League fixture.
"There was a big decision to be made at Liverpool after last season, whether to keep Slot," Houghton told Liverpool.com this week. "And the Anfield board have decided to move him on and bring Iraola in. You have to question what the club will regard as success under Iraola.
"If winning the Premier League title in your first season and finishing fifth in your second isn’t enough, then if Iraola doesn’t make a strong start, there will be a lot of doubts — he’ll be under pressure from day one.
"The problem Iraola will have is that virtually all of his first-team squad are playing at the World Cup, and won’t return for training until very close to the start of the new Premier League season.
"The players that do reach the latter stages of the competition — the quarter-finals, semi-finals and even final — they’re going to need a good break, potentially two, three or even four weeks.
"So that means Iraola won’t be working with his very best players; he’ll be coaching the youngsters and the fringe players. Their first pre-season friendly is already less than a month away, so Iraola won’t have long to prepare the players and get them focused for the challenges that lie ahead.
"For any manager, that’s a really tough ask, but especially for a new manager who will want to work with his players as quickly as possible so they begin to understand what he is trying to achieve, how he sees the team playing and how he sees individual players fitting into his system.
"He may be able to speak with some players on the phone, but there’s nothing that can replicate that face-to-face connection. It’s not going to be an easy task, so I hope the club and the fans give him some leeway. It’s going to be an interesting first few weeks."
New Liverpool head coach Andoni Iraola
New Liverpool head coach Andoni Iraola(Image: Robin Jones - AFC Bournemouth/AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)
Iraola hitting the ground running would be a major boost, but Liverpool knows from last season that a good start doesn't necessarily pave the way for a strong campaign.
"Last season, Liverpool started well — they won their first five Premier League games," Houghton says.
"The form then dipped and then Arne Slot couldn’t turn things around and re-find that winning formula. The fans were getting more and more disenchanted as the season went on. In setting up his team without Mohamed Salah, Iraola is going to have to play the sort of football that the fans saw under Jurgen Klopp.
"In Slot’s first season, players started really wide and were running in behind all the time — Salah, Cody Gakpo, Luis Diaz, Diogo Jota, Darwin Nunez — they were like Olympic sprinters! Trent Alexander-Arnold would be able to play balls over the top, move forward quickly and turn the opposition. That also gave the midfielders more options on the ball.
"Then Slot asked the team to play short, narrow and condense the pitch, with players like Hugo Ekitike who likes to drop short to get involved in the build-up play. The dynamics changed so it will be interesting to see which path Iraola chooses to take the team forward and his tactical philosophy.
"You can see already with the signing of the Spanish winger Victor Munoz that Iraola wants to play with width, and that’s a style they need to go back to."
In addition to new signings, Iraola will also be tasked with getting more from those already at the club. Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz, who came in for big money a year ago, still have lots of potential still to be unlocked.
"Iraola can improve quite a few of the Liverpool players from last season," Houghton, speaking in association with Tonybet, whose World Cup Card Collection campaign can see Irish customers win up to €100,000, continues.
"The players will have been disappointed with the way they performed and their title defense. I wonder whether they rested on their laurels from the previous season; they maybe thought things would be nice and simple, but football doesn’t work like that.
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"One of the things I learned at Liverpool, when I was a player there, is that it doesn’t matter what happened the season before. I won my first league title with Liverpool in 1988.
"Before the start of the next season, Ronnie Moran sat us all down and handed us our medals — for many of us, it was our first league winner’s medal; Peter Beardsley, John Aldridge, John Barnes.
"Moran told us to go home, put the medal in the cupboard and forget all about it. He said it was a new season, and the medal was meaningless.
"That was the mentality of the club back then, and I don’t know if it was the same last summer, but that is the mentality you need even now. Everyone wants to beat the defending champions, and you have to be ready for it — I’m not sure Liverpool were.
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"The players will look back and reflect that they could have done a lot better last season, so they need to think about what they can do differently now."