After three months in charge of Bournemouth, Andoni Iraola’s job security was under intense scrutiny.The Basque boss, relatively unknown to English fans, had lost six and drawn three of his first nine league games. He did not win one until October 28 and was promptly thrashed 6-1 at Manchester City in the following game. Externally, the noise was deafening, especially after he had been installed in place of Gary O’Neil to some surprise in the summer.But sticking by him was Bournemouth’s only option and staffers were quick to dismiss reports of a potential sacking. They were right to do so, as Iraola turned his side’s fortunes around. After no wins in the first nine, they won seven of the next nine, losing only one. From a sinking ship to cruising.But slow starts are a concerning theme for the new Liverpool manager.In his first job at AEK Larnaca in Cyprus, he was sacked by mid-January. At Spanish second-division club Mirandes, Iraola won one, drew five and lost four in his first ten fixtures. It was somewhat better at Rayo Vallecano, however given the club were expected to challenge for promotion, just five wins in the first 11 was nothing special.With all due respect to Rayo, who were Conference League runners-up last season, and Bournemouth, who will play in this year’s Europa League, there are certain things you can get away with at smaller clubs, but which will not fly at Anfield. Slow starts are a concerning theme for new Liverpool manager Andoni Iraola And with all due respect to his former sides such as Rayo Vallecano, there are some things you can get away with at smaller clubs that will not fly at LiverpoolAnd then consider his comments after the 3-2 defeat by Monaco in a pre-season friendly last Sunday. Iraola said that his side played a good first 30 minutes but ‘they don’t have much more, in terms of the levels required to play like this’.It came seven days after a 4-2 loss to Leeds in Chicago where the match followed a similar theme: Liverpool start well, go two goals up, look in fine fettle heading into the break, then capitulate and lose.Now, there is a caveat. Aside from it being pre-season and with a good handful of players not being fully fit after the World Cup summer, Liverpool’s first-half XI in the last two friendlies will not be too dissimilar to the one that starts the opening game of the season away at Newcastle on August 23. Take your best players out for the second half, as Iraola has done, and it should be no surprise that it all falls apart.Iraola’s system is incredibly physically demanding and the buzzword of pre-season was intensity, with Dominik Szoboszlai insisting the ‘intensity we have been missing is back’. Players have ‘felt sick’ at the end of training given the gruelling nature of the new regime.One thing fans criticised Arne Slot for was a lack of such intensity, though worries that the squad were given too many days off was a myth. While they had clearly lost an edge and maybe belief or effort, they worked the same number of hours as they did when winning the league.Regardless, things have changed now and players will need a period of becoming hardened to the new, all-action style. Some players have spoken of having ‘no legs left’, but Iraola slaps down a punishment for those who lose training drills: a sprint to the other end of the pitch and back.Bournemouth ranked first in the Premier League last season for direct attacks and third when it came to high turnovers, defined as any possession sequence that starts in open play and begins 40 metres or fewer from the opponent’s goal.Simon Brundish, a sports science expert, points out that the problem is players’ ability to sprint repeatedly, and be as explosive on sprint No 10 as they were on sprint No 1. He insists this is what vanishes fastest at the end of the season, and can take between four to eight weeks to properly rebuild. Iraola’s system is incredibly physically demanding and the buzzword of pre-season was intensity, with Dominik Szoboszlai insisting the ‘intensity we have been missing is back’ Worryingly, Iraola admitted after the 3-2 home defeat by Monaco last weekend that his players can only handle his style for around 30 minutes
‘Iraola’s actual system is brutal on a specific quality: running just under a full sprint, done together, repeatedly, as a unit,’ says Brundish. ‘Bournemouth did 4.1km of that per game, Liverpool did 1.4km (last season’s averages). Total sprint numbers were basically the same between the two teams. It’s not speed they’re short on. It’s making it repeatable.’Aside from the gruelling nature of the style, players will also need time to adapt tactically to the differences between Slot and Iraola.When speaking to Daily Mail Sport last year, Bournemouth forward Justin Kluivert explained: ‘It took everyone a while to understand. He had a rough start with a lot of losses but the club believed in him, we believed in him – and that is paying off now. He has improved my game significantly… he played me in a different role so I thank Andoni for that… he had a good vision!’Another former Cherry, Antoine Semenyo, said on the In The Mixer podcast: ‘I didn’t see it at the start. When he came in, he had his way of playing and it was very new to us, the way he structured the weeks.‘We didn’t really have any days off, so it’s very hard for a team to go from having Wednesday and Sunday off to having no days off. It was very different at the start. The results weren’t going our way and the fans were saying he needs to be sacked. Everyone slowly got used to the system and it just went up from there.’Iraola, for the record, has shot down Semenyo’s suggestion that the group have no time off – though this pre-season at Liverpool has been particularly demanding. After landing back from the US tour on Monday, the Reds were given Tuesday off and then back on Wednesday.Iraola is not making any early excuses, but it is worth keeping an eye on whether Liverpool come out of the blocks flying, as they have done in previous seasons.In Jurgen Klopp’s final campaign, the Reds won five and drew one of their first six league games. The following year, Slot secured 11 wins in the first 13 games, and it took until the start of April for him to lose for the second time. Last term, they won the first five games and looked primed to retain their Premier League title, but then won only 12 of the remaining 33. Liverpool players face a difficult task in adapting to the repeated sprints that Iraola demanded from his Bournemouth side ‘It took everyone a while to understand,’ Bournemouth’s Justin Kluivert told us. ‘He had a rough start with a lot of losses but they believed in him, we believed in him – and it is paying off’Iraola knows this league is a marathon not a sprint, but is also realistic that he must pick up some wins early in the campaign when his team are not at full capacity, physically or tactically.There is a funny quirk that every manager Iraola will face until mid-October is also new to their job. His first six league fixtures are against Matthias Jaissle, Oliver Glasner, O’Neil, Alvaro Arbeloa, his Bournemouth successor Marco Rose and Enzo Maresca.So Liverpool may look slightly off the pace now but they are certainly not the only ones, and will hope to be boosted by sharp starts from Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz in their sophomore seasons.As Iraola said this week: ‘I would like to say on the first day, we are going to be perfect, everyone will be in place, but probably it is not going to be like this. We will have to do this as quickly as possible.’