Only 12 months ago Liverpool had won each of their first five Premier League games and were seemingly on their way to defending their crown under Arne Slot. That run started with victory over a Bournemouth side led by Andoni Iraola on the opening night of the season. Surely no one thought then that, come the end of the campaign, Iraola would be replacing Slot at Anfield.
Such is the volatility of football, it is too early to pass judgement on Iraola - even if his Liverpool side are already six points worse off than they were at this stage last season. Under the 44-year-old, Liverpool are still unbeaten and this weekend Iraola returns to the place he called home for three years. It will certainly be an odd feeling when he enters the smaller away changing room at Bournemouth - the Cherries have had to renovate it to comply with Europa League regulations, so at least it will be a slightly more pleasant experience than it would have been previously.
Iraola has swapped the seaside on the south coast for the beach town of Formby, where former Liverpool managers Jurgen Klopp and Brendan Rodgers also resided. By all accounts, he is settling in well. He has been spotted in the city centre on a few occasions and, as a keen cyclist, has enjoyed the coastal routes.
But Iraola is most at home on the training ground. He is very much a 'six days a week' coach, according to those at Liverpool, and such is his passion for coaching that he is often the first on the training pitch, marking the cones out for sessions. There's a lot of hard work and no sort of light days.
Everyone's putting in 100%," said forward Lewis Koumas. Those at Liverpool are firmly of the belief that everyone associated with the club was glad to get last season out of the way and that even if Slot had remained as head coach, things were always going to feel better. At Liverpool's AXA Training Centre in Kirkby, Iraola rarely uses his own office and is often found in the coaches room where his assistants in Tommy Elphick, Shaun Cooper and Pablo de la Torre are based, and he has a relatively low-key presence in and around the building, compared to previous managers.
De la Torre, who moved with Iraola from Rayo Vallecano to Bournemouth in 2023, is seen as a key pillar in ensuring that the players are all up to the physical standard that Iraola wants. In terms of actual changes inside the club they are not as big as people may think from the outside, given the structured nature of the head coach role. Iraola's appointment was based on his fine work at Bournemouth but he is very much learning on the job when it comes to dealing with Liverpool's congested schedule.
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