Coming out of the international break, Liverpool faced a gruelling stretch of four matches in just ten days. It’s a run that made the four day break between Villarreal last week in the Champions League and Brighton on Sunday in the Premier League feel practically luxurious.
The norm this season for Liverpool and head coach Andoni Iraola, though, is going to be far more stretches with just two days between games than anything else—and that’s the situation they’re right back into as they prepare to face
Chelsea in the League Cup on Wednesday.
“It’s the same for everybody,” Iraola reflected at his pre-match press conference. “We don’t have time, Chelsea don’t have time, Arsenal doesn’t—so it can make a big difference if you have one more day. Against Brighton we were lucky because we had a few more days.
“But everything has to be done on video when you don’t have time to prepare. Chelsea, Arsenal, Crystal Palace— definitely we will have less time to rest again but sometimes you have to adapt. You cannot overthink it or worry about it, it’s a matter of adapting to the situation.”
Between Chelsea in the League Cup, Arsenal in the league, then Palace—with Fenerbahce in Europe between the Gunners and Eagles—it’s certainly going to be a busy stretch, but even Palace face a similar run with a League Cup tie and Hoffenheim in the Europa League.
Iraola, though, has embraced of rotation in his early days as a Liverpool manager. In fact, it’s hard to recall any previous Liverpool manager being quite so willing to change up his starting eleven proactively, something that was a question mark at the start of the year.
“All the top teams need to rotate,” Iraola added. “It’s not that we have more options, but sometimes you have rotation due to injury or sometimes different demands in games tactically. But I’m happy when we’ve had to use someone who hasn’t played a lot they’ve helped.
“The more players in form the easier my selection will be, even if it will make it harder to leave players out. So there will definitely be changes but we want to win the game. We want to be competitive but we have to see how the legs are. We want to be in the next round.”
