Liverpool's Incomplete Squad: Iraola's Concerns Ahead of Premier League Opener

Andoni Iraola is not dressing this up. As Liverpool prepare to walk into St James’ Park for their Premier League opener, the new manager is starting the season with a squad he openly believes is incomplete – especially out wide.

The backdrop is brutal. Mohamed Salah gone. Andy Robertson gone. Ibrahima Konaté gone. Jeremy Jacquet, Victor Munoz and Ronald Araujo have arrived, but they have not filled the holes left by three pillars of the Klopp era. The bench looks thin in the wide areas, and Iraola is not pretending otherwise.

“I wanted the players from the first day on July 13,” he told reporters before Sunday’s trip to Newcastle United. “I wanted everyone here, all the positions doubled with top-level players. But you understand how the competition works.”

The reality, of course, is the transfer window. The league starts while the market is still open, and managers are forced to juggle tactics with uncertainty.

“The market is open when you start the competition so we have to adapt as coaches to this situation,” Iraola said. “There are certain situations that for me are clear, especially on the wing because we don’t have enough players specifically to play in those positions. In other positions we have to be open-minded in the market to see situations that honestly can improve our team.”

A manager who hates the final 10 days

The final stretch of the window has already turned into a swirl of rumour around Liverpool. The club are hunting two wide forwards, pushing for Paris Saint-Germain’s Bradley Barcola and having seen a £50 million bid for Brighton’s Yankuba Minteh rejected. The names are loud. The answers are not.

For Iraola, this is the part of the job he could do without.

“I hate these 10 days that we have because there is a lot of uncertainty, not just in Liverpool but everywhere,” he admitted. “But we have to not spend too much time thinking about these things.”

When pressed on Barcola and Minteh specifically, the former Bournemouth manager shut the door. No hints, no nods, no winks. With tapping-up rules in mind, he kept his cards close, refusing to add fuel to a story he cannot yet control.

So he leans on what he does have: a group he wants to stabilise while the club hierarchy works the market in the background.

Curtis Jones era closing

Change at Anfield is not just about arrivals and tactical tweaks. It is about goodbyes.

Curtis Jones, an academy product and a symbol of the club’s pathway from Kirkby to the Kop, is on the verge of a £30 million move to Serie A champions Inter. For many supporters, that will sting. For Iraola, it is a move he understands, even as he praises the midfielder’s quality.

“I talked to him in the first or second training day,” Iraola revealed. “I value him a lot as a player, he loves this club, but I understood probably what the outcome would be in the end. He was coming from some years in the same position.”

Those early conversations set the tone. Jones wanted a new challenge. Liverpool, reshaping a squad and a wage bill after major departures, were prepared to listen. The deal is now close, another thread of continuity about to be cut.

A new leadership core – and a captaincy problem

Robertson’s move to Tottenham earlier in the summer did not just remove a left-back. It stripped Liverpool of their vice-captain and one of the loudest voices in the dressing room. Iraola has moved quickly to rebuild the leadership structure around Virgil van Dijk.

Alisson Becker, Dominik Szoboszlai and Joe Gomez have been named in a new leadership group to support the Dutch centre-back. The choice of Alisson underlines his status at the club, but Iraola has had to tackle a modern quirk of the rulebook: goalkeepers as captains are now a logistical headache.

“With the new rule I think there is a big limitation if a ’keeper wears the armband,” he explained. “Because if something happens in the opposition box the referee has to explain to the captains what’s happening, all the decisions. I had one season with Neto in Bournemouth and then you have to start every game to say a different player that can act as a captain, and this is not viable.”

So Alisson becomes a leader without the armband. A pillar in the group, not the one walking to the centre circle for the coin toss.

“But I wanted Alisson to feel like we value him,” Iraola added. “I’ve had enough time and we will have more time to know each other, but I had to explain the decision about the armband to him. Unfortunately, they are putting the rules in a way that there is a lot of disadvantages to having a keeper as a captain.”

It leaves Liverpool stepping into a new season with a new manager, a reshaped hierarchy, a thinning core of title-winning veterans and a transfer scramble still unfolding. Iraola wants more wingers, fewer distractions and clarity before the window shuts.

The question now is simple: will Liverpool get him the firepower he wants before those 10 days he hates finally run out?