With a foundation built on dressing room togetherness and defensive solidity, Liverpool are building sustainably again under Andoni Iraola…
I LOVED Liverpool’s win over Brentford at the weekend.
There’s so much to be said for winning horribly at a tough away ground against a team built on physicality, mental fortitude and being solid at the back.
It suggests a level of physicality, mental fortitude and being solid at the back ourselves, and it’s got me thinking about just how unglamorous the start of Andoni Iraola’s time at Anfield has been – and I promise I mean that as a compliment, so stick with me…
When you think back to great Liverpool sides of the past (and even some of the not-so-great ones), they are retrospectively surrounded by talk of final pieces of the jigsaw.
And while The Reds may need to find several more pieces to make this particular jigsaw the kind that can keep us all entertained for hours on end, there is one piece that has helped the picture towards getting there really come together.
I often laugh at clichés in football and how they tend to get butchered based on the situation they’re referring to, but I do believe the original position that makes the following true is that “defence wins titles”.
In that sense, the signing of Jeremy Jacquet has been an absolute revelation.
There’s so much to be said for a big-money signing coming in and hitting the ground running, and while Liverpool are still waiting for a few to touch grass, they should count their lucky stars that they don’t have to worry about their big Frenchman at the back.
While it’s true that anybody can look good next to Virgil van Dijk, it takes a special kind of player to use that platform to really show their quality, and Jacquet is already doing just that.
He has taken The Reds’ defence from a going concern to us suddenly looking at the imminent return of Giovanni Leoni as an embarrassment of riches, before we even factor the on-loan Ifeanyi Ndukwe into the equation.
Jacquet may well go down as the poster boy of how much Iraola has already been able to steady the ship in a short space of time, but a look at both Ronald Araujo and Victor Munoz might say as much about what the manager is doing off the pitch as on it.
Given what we’ve heard from Andy Robertson about how hard it must have been for last summer’s new signings to settle after the passing of Diogo Jota, you would forgive the dressing room for never truly being able to recover.
Yet the manager has clearly been able to take good care of his new charges and has even got some of the old guard firing again too, with van Dijk and Alexis Mac Allister chief among them.
I honestly didn’t know what I needed from the next manager when Arne Slot was sacked, but seeing our new Spaniard rediscover a sense of togetherness among the squad and tighten things up at the back has me excited about the future for this team.
There is still plenty to work out in attack, but The Reds boast such an abundance of talent in the forward areas that you wouldn’t be surprised to just see it click into place at some point in a way that almost looks accidental.
We got a sneak peek of that with Bradley Barcola on Wednesday, and not necessarily because of the hat-trick given the level of the opposition, but more at how he grew in confidence as the game went on and how his level went up in accordance.
It’s why the manager should also be keen to persist with Florian Wirtz while things around him are going well, as it seems more likely he’ll eventually catch the bug than continue to shrink in a team that seems to be growing in stature with every challenge that comes its way.
Another Alexander Isak goal will certainly help move things along in all senses, too.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase “build it and they will come” recently, and it feels like Iraola has prioritised putting those building blocks of togetherness and solidity in place, while letting the rest come naturally.
It’s not breathtaking yet, but it feels like we’re witnessing the start of a serious football team to me.
Sleep on it at your peril…
