Crazy news, Andoni Iraola suddenly under pressure to keep Liverpool job

Andoni Iraola has only just taken over at Liverpool and he's already under pressure. A crazy turn of events.

Liverpool made a bold decision this summer as they sacked Arne Slot and replaced him with Bournemouth’s Andoni Iraola. The Reds decided that the team was going backwards under the Dutchman and needed something new.

Iraola, then, will hope to have a similar effect on Liverpool as he did at Bournemouth. The Cherries saw fantastic growth under him, moving from a consistent lower mid-table team into one competing for Europe.

A similar boost for the Reds would get them back challenging for the title, of course, and that’s the big hope here. Only, there’s now added pressure on Iraola and it comes before he’s even had a chance to work with his new players.

The Athletic reported on Thursday that Richard Hughes is expected to take over at Al-Hilal after this summer. The Liverpool sporting director was long been linked with a move out there and his long-time assistant, Steve Francis, is currently working with the Saudi Pro League club.

It’s got to be a strange one for Iraola. The man who hired him won’t be sticking around for his actual work, instead moving on for someone else to take over.

That means a new boss for the Spaniard within just a couple of months. A new boss who won’t have staked his reputation on the head coach, nor will he necessarily view Iraola as the right option.

And so Liverpool’s new head coach must convince the sporting director that he’s the right man for the job all over again. It piles the pressure on from day one, and in a way that’s unusual.

Now, we do entirely back Iraola to convince everyone that he’s the right man. We don’t, however, expect he’ll get the same kind of time that Slot got - he was Hughes’s pick and that unquestionably brought him a far higher benefit of the doubt.

Iraola won’t have that with whoever his next boss is. The pressure is on immediately to earn it.