Van Dijk and Wirtz Back Iraola as Liverpool Adjust After Slot

Virgil van Dijk played his first match under Andoni Iraola on Sunday, a pre-season defeat to Monaco at Anfield that repeated an uncomfortable pattern from Liverpool’s tour of the United States the previous week. Twice now Iraola’s side have built a two-goal lead in a pre-season match and failed to protect it, and the new head coach was blunt in front of the cameras about why. “The problem is right now they probably don’t have the energy for 90 minutes,” he said. “They started to get tired and that will take time for them.”

A Familiar Collapse

Liverpool led 2-0 before eventually losing 3-2, mirroring their 4-2 defeat to Leeds in Chicago a week earlier when they also surrendered a two-goal cushion. Iraola drew the comparison himself. “It was quite similar to the game against Leeds,” he told LFCTV. “We played a good first half but we don’t have much more in terms of the level required to play like this. And then they were much better in the second half.”

He was careful not to single out individuals for the dip in intensity. “In the same way we were better in the first half, they were much better in the second half and they deserved to turn around the game,” Iraola said. “A lot of the senior players were at different levels but mostly they were in a good place. Even the ones playing their first or second game had energy. We need more training with them, but we can take a lot of positives but also a lot of negatives from today.”

Iraola also gave an update on two players missing from his squad. “With Jeremy we decided not to put him in today, but he should be fine for the next game,” he said of new signing Jeremy Jacquet. “He’s take a little bit more time than we expected. Curtis has trained every day but yesterday he had some issues in his hip. It doesn’t look like anything big, but it didn’t make any sense to risk it,” he added of Curtis Jones, with both players targeted for the friendly against Como next Sunday.

A New Voice After a Sacking

Iraola’s arrival closes an unsettled chapter at Anfield. Arne Slot was sacked on May 30, roughly a year after leading Liverpool to the Premier League title, following a difficult follow-up campaign. Iraola, who spent three seasons transforming Bournemouth into a top-half Premier League side, signed a two-year contract in June with a brief to make Liverpool sharper and more front-footed than they had become under Slot. His final campaign on the south coast ended with a club-record 57 points and sixth place, enough to send Bournemouth into the Europa League for the first time in the club’s 127-year history, a remarkable achievement for a side that was playing third-tier football little more than a decade earlier.

Van Dijk, Liverpool’s captain, played the full match against Monaco and spoke afterwards about adjusting to a manager he had known for barely two months. “It’s been absolutely fine,” he said. “We had a great conversation in the first week when he got announced. The main thing for him to know, and obviously that’s what I told him, is that I’m here for him regardless of anything he needs. For me to do for the team or whatever, I’m here for him. Hopefully we’ll be successful this season, that’s what we want.”

He was quick to add that the change in the dugout did not diminish what came before. “Nothing to take away from Arne and his staff,” Van Dijk said. “We had an amazing time together, obviously last year we were disappointed. This year we have a new manager, new ways of preparation, so we all have to adapt to it. New staff, different training methods. But I liked working under Arne, and I’m sure I would like working under the new manager as well.”

Wirtz Sees What Bournemouth Saw

Florian Wirtz, who arrived at Liverpool last summer for a British-record fee of £116m from Bayer Leverkusen, offered his own early verdict on Iraola. “The last three years he did at Bournemouth, you could see what he can do with the team,” Wirtz said. “Of course we are looking forward to working with him. The first couple of weeks, I can just say that I’m enjoying it.”

Wirtz’s comment points to the reputation that made Iraola an attractive appointment in the first place. At Bournemouth he built a team that pressed aggressively and played without fear against bigger clubs, extracting results that regularly outstripped the size of the squad and budget available to him. Translating that same identity onto a squad with Liverpool’s array of established internationals is a different challenge, one that requires senior players to buy into a more demanding physical approach than the one many were used to under Slot.

Building a Squad Around Width

Iraola’s priorities in the transfer market this summer have followed the same logic as his tactical approach. Wide forwards who can attack space in behind opposition defences sit at the top of Liverpool’s shopping list, with the club continuing to explore a deal for Paris Saint-Germain winger Bradley Barcola even as talks over his valuation remain some distance apart. In defence, Liverpool have moved to add cover by agreeing a loan for Barcelona centre-back Ronald Araujo, a deal that includes an option to buy and addresses a position left short by Ibrahima Konate’s departure to Real Madrid.

Those additions reflect a squad still being shaped around Iraola’s demands rather than one already built for them, which helps explain the uneven pre-season results. A head coach who wants his wingers running in behind and his full-backs supporting from deep needs personnel suited to that job, and Liverpool are still working out which of their existing options fit best and where the gaps remain heading into the Premier League opener.

Small Details, Fresh Regime

Even small structural questions remain unresolved under the new regime. With Andy Robertson having left the club, Liverpool’s vice-captaincy sits vacant, and Dominik Szoboszlai confirmed this week that Iraola has not yet raised the subject with the squad. “No, there hasn’t been any conversation,” Szoboszlai said. “Obviously we have Virgil as the captain. We have Ali. We have Joe Gomez. So there was no conversation at all. If you get offered the vice-captaincy at Liverpool, you’re going to take it. It would be a proud moment for me. But I respect everybody, so either way, whoever it’s going to be we’re going to follow them.”

Details like leadership structure tend to sort themselves out once results start counting, but the fact they remain open this close to the season underlines how much of Iraola’s Liverpool is still a work in progress. Van Dijk remains club captain regardless of who wears the armband on a given afternoon, and his willingness to publicly back the new head coach sends a clear signal to a dressing room watching how its senior players respond to change.

Fitness Before Football

What Iraola’s early comments make clear is that he sees conditioning, not tactics, as the immediate priority. Twice in successive matches his team have shown they can match good opposition for 45 minutes before fading, and with the Premier League season only weeks away, there is limited time left to close that gap. The head coach’s own assessment, that his group needs more training before they can sustain a full performance, suggests supporters should expect summer friendlies to keep producing uneven results even as the underlying process takes shape.

For a squad still absorbing a managerial change less than three months old, the reaction from senior figures like Van Dijk and Wirtz will count for more than any pre-season scoreline. Both spoke of adaptation rather than upheaval, of new methods layered onto an established core rather than a rebuild from scratch. That tone from the dressing room gives Iraola room to work through the conditioning issues he has been open about, without the noise that can follow a difficult pre-season at a club with Liverpool’s expectations.

What happens next will say more about this Liverpool side than the Monaco result itself. One more friendly against Como remains before the Premier League begins, and Iraola will hope it is the last time this squad hands back a two-goal lead. Jacquet and Jones are expected to be available by then, adding depth in defence and midfield respectively, and a fuller squad should make it easier to judge whether Sunday’s problems were about fitness, as Iraola insists, or something that will need longer to fix. Either way, the head coach has three weeks to turn goodwill from his senior players into a Liverpool side capable of playing a full match at the intensity he wants. That timeline is not abstract. Liverpool open the Premier League season away to Newcastle United on August 23, Iraola’s first competitive match in charge, and the head coach will want Sunday’s fitness concerns resolved well before then.