This time last week, Liverpool appeared set to continue on with Arne Slot as their head coach, with all signs pointing to club upper management being determined to continue a project that began two summers ago but that had been steadily heading in the wrong direction over the past 18 months.
Such was the belief Slot would carry on that the manager had been fully involved in recruitment planning heading into the off season and favoured Feyenoord-era assistant Etiënne Reijnen had been lined up to join
his staff. In fact, Reijnen had resigned from Feyenoord at the end of the season ahead of his presumed move.
On Saturday, everything changed. Slot was out. The consensus almost instantly settled on Andoni Iraola as his successor, the 43-year-old Basque manager who counts himself as a protege of high-press pioneer and all around coaching legend Marcelo Bielsa and who had recently stepped down from Bournemouth.
Over the next few days, that consensus belief was backed up by club briefings and by Tuesday it was widely reported that a two-year contract had been agreed—Iraola has signed short contracts at every stop he’s made as a coach—and that he would bring four coaches with him from The Cherries.
As close as that got us to a done deal, it’s not actually a done deal. According to club-connected David Lynch, we should get to that stage on Thursday when Iraola arrives on Merseyside to sign the contract and officially become the club’s 23rd full time manager and its tenth of the Premier League era.
Once that’s done and Iraola is announced, focus will turn to transfers, with the Reds facing a massively important summer after 2025’s dealings left a thin and unbalanced squad and with the departures of Mohamed Salah, Andy Robertson, and Ibrahima Konaté this summer further complicating matters in 2026.
