We can get hung up on our favourite vintage and dismiss the new, but Andoni Iraola needs time to write his name into history at Anfield…
I’M MADE up Neil referenced Getdown Services in his review of the Ipswich game on Friday.
I like them too, thanks to a WhatsApp group I’m in which covers an online music game we play.
New tunes are seldom referenced there as it’s a full 25 years since we left uni, so one week we all had to come to the table to celebrate a post-2024 song.
It was more difficult than you’d think.
Anyway, my mate offered Getdown Service to the room, so in a moment of uncharacteristic bravery, I investigated further. Yep. Right up my street.
That look at anything contemporary becomes increasingly difficult as the years pass. It’s so much easier to cling to the more comfortable sounds of your youth rather than seeking out the new and the strange. There’s a comfort to nostalgia that is often too tricky to break.
Talk to me about Fabinho in comparison to the 1979 Graeme Souness. Sorry, but there’s only one winner. Not sorry, actually. And that’s part of the problem.
The Jürgen Klopp era of Liverpool is over. The Beatles split up 56 years ago.
But it’s still the album you go to when assessing something new. Part of our brain tells us that Andoni Iraola’s side is somehow still playing a variant of Jürgen’s tunes even though there’s a world of difference between the two.
Ipswich might have been the first time we’ve seen what an Iraola side looks like.
Alexander Isak barely touching the ball, but winning the game in eight minutes with a performance we’ve all been waiting for. Florian Wirtz beginning to make a modicum of sense. Cody Gakpo trying new riffs out rather than that cut inside and shoot thing he did all the time last season.
Of course, we have to bear in mind that we were playing a newly promoted side who were caught in the headlights and there are still a ton of wrinkles to be ironed out, but this was the first time the demos started to take shape. I can see what he’s trying to do now.
One thing that I’ve really liked are his team changes.
I thought Ryan Gravenberch was awful against Newcastle and was pleased to see that he had the week off when Nottingham Forest came to Anfield. In that game, Jeremie Frimpong was given a torrid time at right back so Big Ron Araujo came in and sorted that out.
I liked Arne Slot and think he’s been treated badly in the main for having been given the worst possible of hands, but it did my head in that players guilty of a bad performance were often rewarded with the next game.
Iraola may be trying new faces simply because he has to get people fit or rested, but I like that he makes changes immediately.
I’m a big fan of The Bug Club, if you’re interested.
There’ll always be a hankering for the days of Sadio Mane, Bobby Firmino and Mo Salah, but you can’t judge everything that’s to come on them.
Though there’s nothing wrong with revisiting The Eight-Legged Groove Machine from time to time, classic bands, classic Liverpool teams, have to be allowed their own room.
We can only hope that they become the Jürgen years for the next generation. A new generation with their new, awful music. Probably.
Turn and face the strange. (A great song, that one. 1971.)
Iraola needs his identity stamped onto this team, and Friday looked like the first time we’ve shrugged off the old regime and begun something anew.
Friday felt like a change.
Anyway, I’m off to see The Bootleg Beatles tonight.
I love these new bands.
