I’m not sure how he could manage both us and Leverkusen. If you think Slot’s commuting situation is problematic…
Hahaha…Sky made a grammar mistake lol!
It hasn’t tickled me yet ![]()
However, if he moves to Liverpool and lives near the area. I would be happy. He isn’t Luis Enrique, but Araola has to be much better than Slot. You guys saying very positive things about him.
I trust the TAN family judgement
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Let’s put it this way. In the entire season, he lost 3 of his first choice back 4, both of his first choice wingers and had to integrate all the new signings to replace the departures. His team dipped a little and rallied back strongly for a Europa placing which could have been a UCL placing if LFC didn’t lose to Aston Villa and drew with Chelsea. His team was also 1 Erling Haaland goal away or 1 Gibbs-white from making all of our collective arses sweat on the final day of the season for UCL. If Haaland and Gibbs-white didn’t score, it is us who will be in the Europa League next season…
His team’s longest losing streak was 2 matches in a row. However, the non-winning streak was a 11 games streak. After that, his team went on a 18 unbeaten streak with 8 victories and 10 draws to get 5th place in the league.
Does Iraola know something we don’t? Has he been approached already?
Why? Has anything been said?
The Athletic have reported that Milan are in talks with Pochettino, while Nicolo Schira is claiming that Leverkusen have approached Glasner. I’m not reading too much into Iraola’s potential future with Liverpool, just forwarding what I’ve read. I still expect Liverpool to stick with Slot, though.
Palace have made Iraola an offer and they’re awaiting an answer, it sez 'ere. Apparently they want an answer by the weekend.
Don’t we all.
He’s supposed to have said he wants to manage Liverpool or Leverkusen., that’s all.
Poor Iraola, his name is getting butchered on TAN: Uraola, Araola. He cannot be LFC head coach/manager just for that alone! (Oh, Sebastian Hoeneß would be a big problem too!) ![]()
Well, U and I are very close.
I’m just calling him Bob if he comes.
Just came across this video from The Athletic FC Podcast. The part at 15:00 is particular interesting. They are talking not just the coaching ability, but whether Iraola be able to handle the pressure being in a massive club like LFC. Unfortunately, no one seems to have an actual insight of Iraola’s personality on whether he could do that.
Full video on Iraola.
It’s something that Rory Smith and Roger Bennett touched on in their podcast and the challenge of finding coaches with experience of working at a close enough level for us to recruit with a level of confidence, particularly because of the growth of top premier clubs over the last 15-20 years.
Yeah its the old “he could go winless in 8 in Bournemouth and no one particularly cared so how do you know he can stand up to the scrutiny of a job with this much higher of a profile.”
And I get it. But unless you want to rehash established guys who bring their own baggage you cannot answer that question from their experience alone. You need to find a way to answer it qualitatively or get comfortable in the lack of certainty because otherwise you are backing yourself into a corner of making a decision to keep the wrong guy because you are too indecisive over who the better option is. And that is itself a choice.
i think there is shit going on behind the scenes
https://x.com/FabrizioRomano/status/2060099082413047923
But I think you have to acknowledge that it’s a risk. The way people are acting about Iraola is that he is guaranteed to be better than Slot, but I don’t think that is certain by any stretch.
I’m Iraola curious, but I can’t help but be worried that all of the selling points to his appointment are tempered with ‘it’s easier to do that in Bournemouth’. Bring through kids? Yep, It’s a lot easier to show patience to one going through a learning curve down there. Play expansive, attacking football? Sure, go ahead and get whacked occasionally - it’s only Bournemouth. Got a limited team playing above its level? Easier to do when your rivals are mid table teams, rather than Europe’s Elite.
I think replacing Slot with Alonso was a no brainer. This was a guy who had excelled in Germany and went unbeaten to win the league in extraordinary fashion. Huge personality and respected across the game. The club obviously did not think so.
Iraola is a much more difficult decision. Whether we like it or not, Slot has won a Premier League title in the last couple of years and that should count for something. Very little of what Iraola has accomplished is directly transferable to managing Liverpool. He has done brilliantly at Bournemouth, but he had had the space to play the football he wants - not many teams low block Bournemouth - with no pressure and little expectation. He will not get that here, and it will be a hell of a leap.
Unless the club see something in Iraola’s data that looks genuinely exciting and they can hang their hat on, appointing him - jettisoning a manager who won a league 12 months ago along the way - is a massive gamble. To me it feels a bit like appointing Brendan. Taking a manager who did well with a smaller club and making them more than the sum of their parts, and hoping that they can translate those skills and add new ones on the bigger stage.
If the club are hesitant about Iraola, it might be that they are mindful that 12 months ago they looked like they’d smashed it with their successor to Klopp. Whatever has gone wrong in the meantime, their calculation might be that it is more likely that Slot can get back to the level he has shown he can work at, than it is Iraola can get to a level he has never worked at. As as much as it might piss people off, I’m not sure they would be wrong about that.
I just want to be able to enjoy watching us play again. There’s a good chance that happens under someone like Iraola given his preferred way of playing. There is of course some uncertainty.
There’s no uncertainty over Slot though, another season of watching us managed by him will be a 100% guaranteed weekly exercise of having what remains of my spirit being slowly but inexorably drained from my body.
https://x.com/i/status/2060045003968168265
Maybe, the chosen one is Enrique???
Tony, surely?!