Reports on Saturday suggest that Andoni Iraola is set to be appointed as the new Liverpool manager following the sacking of Arne Slot.
Note: this is an updated version of an article published in April 2026. You can find the original piece here.
It didn’t take long after Liverpool had announced the sacking of Arne Slot for the likely identity of his successor to emerge.
According to reports, outgoing Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola will be taking up the head coach position at Anfield this summer.
Liverpool’s decision to confirm Slot’s departure was hardly surprising given how far the club has fallen in the last year or given the persistent rumours of unrest in the first-team dressing room. Regardless, his sacking signals a remarkable decline for a manager who won the Premier League only 12 months ago.
In his debut campaign in England, Slot guided Liverpool to the title, but this season he only just managed qualification for the Champions League. There are tonnes of extenuating circumstances – not least the decline of superstar forward Mohamed Salah, and the death of Diogo Jota last summer – but nothing can take away the feeling that this was the right time to part ways.
And the immediate talk is that Iraola will be the new man in the dugout. The Spaniard has moved on from Bournemouth following the expiration of his contract this summer, and he is set to be appointed at one of the biggest clubs in the world. One of the people behind the decision is Liverpool’s sporting director, Richard Hughes, who was technical director at Bournemouth when they appointed Iraola in 2023.
The Spaniard did a fantastic job on the south coast, breaking Bournemouth’s top-flight points record in each of his three seasons there. Last week, he secured Bournemouth’s first foray into Europe with an unprecedented sixth-place finish, which broke the record for their best-ever league position – a record Iraola had equalled a year before (ninth).
He built a team capable of beating the best while playing an exciting, forward-thinking, high-pressing, and progressive style of football that is both easy on the eye and effective.
What’s more, he did it while Bournemouth consistently sold their best players. Last summer alone, they lost four of their first-choice back five, with Dean Huijsen, Milos Kerkez, and Illia Zabarnyi all departing, while Kepa Arrizabalaga went back to parent club Chelsea before being sold to Arsenal. The year before, top scorer Dominic Solanke was sold, and just four months ago, Antoine Semenyo, who was then Bournemouth’s top scorer, left for Manchester City.
Remarkably, Bournemouth don’t look any weaker for it. They ended the season on a sensational run of 18 games without defeat – the longest unbeaten streak by any side at any point in the Premier League this season. It also makes them the first team that aren’t called Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City or Manchester United to go on such a long run (within a single season) in the Premier League era.
Bournemouth’s style of play under Iraola is perfectly suited to the Premier League, and could make him a great fit at Liverpool. It is based around high pressing and fast and direct play when they get the ball. Iraola’s football is an indication, according to six-time Premier League winner Pep Guardiola, of precisely the direction that football is going in.
“Today, modern football is the way that Bournemouth play, that Newcastle play, Brighton play, Liverpool have always been like that,” the now-departed Manchester City manager said last year.
Indeed, 2024-25 is the only season on record in the Premier League (since 2006-07) that has seen more shots from fast breaks (1.79 per game) than this season (1.75), and it’s a close call. That rate increased slowly from 0.78 per game in 2020-21 to more than twice as many in each of the two most recent seasons.
Since Iraola came to England, only one team has had more shots from fast breaks in Premier League games than Bournemouth (128). It just so happens that the team at the top of that particular list is Liverpool (155).
Over Iraola’s reign, Bournemouth have attacked the fastest of every team, with the average speed of their moves upfield clocking in at 1.95 metres per second. Only one ever-present team (Everton) has averaged fewer passes per sequence than Bournemouth (2.98). Central to Iraola’s philosophy is playing forwards as swiftly as possible.
“The first thing we try to do when we recover the ball is play to the number nine,” he told Sky Sports in an interview in 2024. “Because that is usually the moment when the opponent is less well-positioned and you can find better spaces.”
He wants his players to try and win the ball high up the pitch, too, before combining a regain with attacking quickly towards goal. Over the course of his Bournemouth reign, his side ranked fifth for high turnovers (winning the ball within 40m of the opposition’s goal), third for shot-ending high turnovers and fourth for goal-ending high turnovers. Liverpool, meanwhile, have scored more goals following a high turnover than any other team in that period (27).
Only three teams had a lower PPDA (passes allowed per defensive action) rate than his Bournemouth side (10.6), showing they have been one of the league’s most proactive sides when out of possession.
Iraola has been extremely successful, too. After a difficult start, when he failed to win any of his first nine games in charge and was widely assumed to have been drifting towards the sack, he turned things around dramatically. Since the end of that winless run, only Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool, Aston Villa, Chelsea and Newcastle have picked up more points in the Premier League than Bournemouth (158, or 1.50 per game).
Until this year, they had arguably been unfortunate not to have made it into Europe sooner. Last season, for example, Bournemouth finished ninth, but they were sixth in Opta’s expected points table.
The underlying data suggested they deserved Aston Villa’s spot in the Europa League, and hinted that better was to come. As it turned out, Bournemouth didn’t have to wait long for a real-life sixth-place finish, and Iraola leaves the club in a markedly different position from that which he found it.
So, Would a Move to Liverpool Make Sense?
Many had assumed that former Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso would be the favourite to take over at Anfield, but he has gone to Chelsea, and the timing of the Iraola news suggests Liverpool – and likely Hughes – always had their eye on the former Bournemouth manager.
Liverpool fans would enjoy Iraola’s fast-paced football, and the team is already set up to play that way; they had more shots from fast breaks (51) than any other team in the Premier League this season.
They also clearly have the players to play Iraola’s pressing game. Liverpool topped the Premier League for goal-ending high turnovers this season, with 10, which was three more than any other team.
It appears as though the foundations are there for Iraola to build something that works very well at Anfield, and the club will also hope that he can help get more out of the players who are already there.
After a difficult first season for Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz, for example, Liverpool will need their new manager to get more from those expensive signings. His impressive work at Bournemouth suggests he could be just the man for the job.
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