Andoni Iraola’s Liverpool Football Club have looked quite impressive over the 13 matches played so far this season. And, if one were to ignore the match involving a specific club found guilty of historic financial misdeeds, you’d find a club that is currently undefeated across all competitions. Given what the first 5 months of 2026 looked like, this feels like a revelation.
It’s still a small sample size – I’ll allow that. But looking at the style of play and the uptick in form of elite players such
as Cody Gakpo, Alexander Isak, and Florian Wirtz, it’s hard not to be excited by what the Spanish coach is putting together at Anfield.
There’s so many places I can go when discussing the improvements that I’ve witnessed so far, but let’s start with three:
Improved Press
I don’t think the press is up to the tempo that Iraola prefers quite yet, but Liverpool look a far cry from last season when it felt like turning the ball over would mean long stretches of opposition possession. Now, it looks like the team is sending multiple pressers at angles that feel more effective throughout. The Liverpool that I’d become accustomed to that fought to win the ball back and dominate by not just holding the ball look much more present in this current iteration than in last season’s almost listless club.
I understand that underlying stats still note that we’re not quite at the tempo that Iraola prefers, or even the one held by the most recent League Winning version of Liverpool. But the club look hungry and dynamic in all phases of the ball. Aggressive. Which is to say that they’re looking to impress a style on their opponents and take the initiative. It’s a brand of football I can get behind.
Youth Development
A hallmark of Slot’s tenure – including his title-winning season – is how much he seemed to undervalue youth. While current circumstances are may be allowing him to be right about the likes of Harvey Elliott, the slow-drip approach to bringing on Rio Ngumoha and Trey Nyoni looks to have been the wrong one, as both players have absolutely grown by leaps and bounds under the tutelage – and trust – of Iraola.
With Rio, it always felt that he’d make the jump given how well he’d started under Slot and perhaps managing the minutes of someone so young, makes sense. But with Gakpo struggling rather famously last season, it feels a bit of a missed opportunity to not have him be more involved and getting starts.
Nyoni, meanwhile, has been an absolute revelation this season. His level of play seems to match all the hype coming from the Academy and has not only made helped given the injury to Dominik Szoboszlai and the inconsistent play of Ryan Gravenberch, but has ultimately justified Liverpool’s lack of spending on midfielders during the transfer window.
But, and perhaps most famously, the player that’s most benefited from Andoni Iraola is one Lewis Koumas. I am not going to say I called it – I’m very much not a professional assessor of footballing talent. But I will say that I held a few chats with Liverpool supporting friends and even folks here on the masthead where I indicated during pre-season that I would love to see Koumas work his way into the team. His grit, sense of positioning, and willingness to work are easy reasons to love him. And it really feels like he’s not far away from a potential breakthrough. I can’t see him projecting beyond a solid, perhaps yeoman’s, career in the Premier League, but I feel more and more comfortable that his ceiling might really be there.
Rotation
Which leads us to rotation. Liverpool’s advancement into the next round of the Carabao Cup against a rather strong Chelsea side where Liverpool featured each of the youth players named above as starters in the match is massive because it was accomplished by resting key players.
Iraola has made use of his full bench – a bench, I know, that wasn’t always available to Arne Slot given the injury crisis that hit last season – and I can’t state enough how necessary it was to be able to develop youth players in order to fill those gaps. Iraola looks nothing short of a miracle worker at present as his decisions have helped the club keep pace in their chase for as many honors as possible come the end of the season.
Which is what makes Sunday’s tilt against Arsenal feel so meaningful. It was this October stretch that many would look at as among the club’s most difficult. And if you consider that Liverpool will have faced Manchester City, Brighton, and Arsenal in the League, with Chelsea in the Carabao Cup all within this stretch of matches, you’d say that these results would say a lot about the state of the club’s progress in this new era.
I’m willing to qualify the City result given the erroneous red card and how much that changed the match, especially noting that I feel this iteration of the Citizens is incredibly fallible in ways that not many of the Pep sides looked. But if we’re looking at direct rivals/threats to the top of the table, Liverpool will have faced them all by the end of Sunday. And before that point, they’ve notched two earned and impressive victories against Brighton and Chelsea.
Which leaves us tomorrow’s match. Currently, Liverpool and Arsenal are two of three clubs in the League with only 1 loss (the other being Brentford). Which is to say, that Liverpool have suddenly become a club that’s stubbornly difficult to take points off of. We know Arsenal have a reputation of being difficult to beat. Something’s got to give.
It’s still early, yes. Barely a quarter of the matches played so far, come Sunday. Which means the table – and the individual narratives for each club – are all quite fluid. But I think we’ll know quite a bit about this Liverpool club coming out of this clash. Because they’ll have had the opportunity to face down everyone in the current top 5. And, if they take all three points, will have the chance to claim a rather impressive record against them.
No pressure, really. But I do imagine this new group of burgeoning mentality monsters would relish the challenge. After the 90, we’ll see how they stack up.
