I couldn’t care less that Liverpool lost 2-3 to Monaco. It’s pre-season. The score will be forgotten before Monday morning.
What matters is what the game revealed.
For 45 minutes Liverpool looked quick, aggressive and dangerous. Alexander Isak wanted the ball constantly, Florian Wirtz kept finding pockets where good footballers cause damage, Cody Gakpo looked sharp, and there was a purpose to the attacking play that had been missing far too often last season.
There’s a very good football team in there.
The problem is how quickly it disappears.
Once the changes came, Liverpool lost authority, creativity and threat. The second half became flat, disjointed and increasingly vulnerable. That concerns me far more than any friendly defeat because it exposed the distance between Liverpool’s best players and the options underneath them.
A Premier League season doesn’t allow you to pick your best eleven every week. Injuries arrive. Form disappears. Suspensions come. Champions League nights demand rotation. That is where squads are judged.
Isak and Wirtz can transform this attack if they stay fit. Iraola looks capable of getting far more from both. Yet Liverpool cannot build a season around hoping the first-choice players are always available.
There are three weeks left in this transfer window.
Richard Hughes must use them properly.
Liverpool need more quality, more reliability and more genuine first-team options. Fail to do that and a top-four challenge could become far harder than it needs to be.
Iraola said it himself- the intensity dropped after 30 minutes. Suggests it’s at least in part a fitness issue and getting used to how he wants them to play. He had a slow start at Bournemouth as the players adapted and so maybe we need to expect a tough opening stretch of fixtures. Our start is relatively kind I think and the players we have hopefully will soon have will also make a difference.