Liverpool's Imbalanced Squad: The Challenge Ahead for Iraola

Liverpool have spent big again. More than last summer. Another £200m-plus poured into Andoni Iraola’s first squad, and yet he reaches the end of the window with a team that looks anything but complete.

Jamie Carragher did not dress it up on Sky Sports. "It does not look like a balanced squad," he said. "Liverpool are short in the full-back areas and probably a midfield player as well."

That is the nub of it. A club-record outlay, including £123m on Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-Germain, and still the questions outnumber the answers.

A lopsided attack after Salah

Even Barcola’s arrival cuts straight to the heart of the problem. Liverpool have just lost Mohamed Salah, the best left-footed right-winger the Premier League has seen, and have responded by stockpiling players who prefer the opposite flank.

"Liverpool have not got a real out-and-out right-sided attacker," Carragher said. "We have not got anybody with a left foot on that right side, like Mo Salah. I am disappointed. I am not quite sure what we are going to do on that right wing right now."

Barcola can play across the frontline, but the price tag screams “put him where he is best.” That is not the right wing. Cody Gakpo has been stationed off the left so far. Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike have both operated there as well.

Rio Ngumoha broke through on that same flank last season before being tested on the opposite side in pre-season. Victor Munoz? Again, another left winger by trade, signed after one standout campaign in the top flight.

One or two such profiles would be a quirk. This many turns it into a structural puzzle. The squad looks overloaded in certain attacking lanes and strangely bare in others.

Full-backs at the heart of the problem

The imbalances do not end in the final third. They might not even start there.

When Jeremie Frimpong arrived last summer, Liverpool were keen to stress he was not a direct replacement for Trent Alexander-Arnold at right-back. Two games into this season, that is exactly where he has been used.

With Conor Bradley injured, Frimpong is the only fit specialist in the role. Some argue Dominik Szoboszlai could fill in, but that feels like a workaround, not a plan. Shunting a centre-back out wide is even less appealing when the full-backs are so central to Iraola’s system.

The numbers underline that. Frimpong and Milos Kerkez sit among the top three players in the Premier League for sprints this season. The only man ahead of them? Adrien Truffert of Bournemouth, Iraola’s former side. The pattern is clear: the full-backs are asked to go, and to keep going.

Look at Liverpool’s average positions in these opening games and compare them to that title-winning campaign under Arne Slot. The full-backs fly on, often together, which heaps responsibility on the midfield to slide across and plug the gaps.

That is where the anxiety creeps in. Ryan Gravenberch rose to the challenge under Slot, but Alexis Mac Allister’s physical drop-off over the past 18 months is hard to ignore. Does Iraola actually have the legs and the profile in midfield to smother counter-attacks?

No true holding midfielder – by design?

There is a deeper tactical question here. Is Iraola even looking for a classic holding midfielder?

At Bournemouth, he wanted his midfielders to step up and press, not sit and screen. Alex Scott spoke about being "very aggressive" without the ball. Tyler Adams described a group that genuinely believed they would win it back high up the pitch.

The early signs at Liverpool suggest a similar gamble. Carragher has already sounded the alarm. "I do not believe that midfield can function with the personnel in there," he said. "For me, it does not work. And it is not just about personnel, it is the structure the manager is asking for."

The warning lights flashed within five minutes of the first Premier League game. Liverpool’s rest defence was sliced open: full-backs high, centre-backs deep, and no midfielder occupying the space in between. Newcastle poured through it and scored.

Given how aggressively the full-backs are used, and with Virgil van Dijk increasingly inclined to drop off rather than step in, this is not a one-off glitch. It looks like a recurring fault line in the design.

So Iraola finds himself in charge of Liverpool’s most expensively assembled squad, and yet, arguably, its most obviously flawed group for a decade.

Compromises or chaos?

Can he fix this without another dip into the market? Only if he is willing to bend his ideals.

"You do not want to lose the offensive side, the fluidity, the arrivals with numbers, but obviously we were punished the other day, especially in the first goal," Carragher said. "We did not do a proper lockdown."

That is the tension. Liverpool do not want to turn off the tap of attacking runners just to avoid being exposed. "We cannot go from one way where we send a lot of people forward to keeping everyone back so we do not arrive with numbers," Carragher added. "I do not want to tell Ryan Gravenberch not to carry the ball or arrive in the box."

The solution, he argued, lies in game intelligence. "It is a matter of identifying the situation. You cannot be with the joystick every time [controlling] the player. There are players that are very good at smelling the danger. 'I cannot risk going now. I think I have to stay.' Recognising those situations is the job."

For now, the results feel in tune with the squad: wild, open, and high scoring. A couple of chaotic draws that showcase both the firepower and the fragility.

Liverpool under Iraola look imbalanced, imperfect, and utterly watchable. The money has been spent. The risks are clear. The only unknown is whether this team will blitz its way through the season or be undone by the gaps it refuses to close.