Andoni Iraola makes Bournemouth return still learning on the job at Liverpool

Alisson made little attempt to sugarcoat Liverpool’s unbeaten start to the season under Andoni Iraola when analysing the draw against Fulham with the club’s in-house media. “Unbeaten with three draws is not something to celebrate too much with this shirt,” said a peeved Liverpool goalkeeper. “We take the clean sheet but we are not happy at all. We need to aim for big things.”

Big things are the target and big things are expected from a Liverpool side containing three £100m-plus forwards. But the learning curve under the new head coach is proving challenging. As it is for the new head coach, too. Big decisions appear unavoidable.

Related: Lewis Koumas on playing ‘the Liverpool way’, showing hunger and hopes for the future

When Iraola faces his former club Bournemouth on Sunday for the first time since ending his impressive three-year reign there last season, he is likely to know more about the opposition players than his own. “It’s going to be a tricky one because they know very well what we try to do,” Iraola said. “But I also know their strengths and weaknesses. It’s going to be strange for me.”

Iraola spent more than two hours debriefing Marco Rose, his successor at the Vitality Stadium, on the Bournemouth squad and staff in June. They had time for a smooth handover because, as Iraola put it, his exit from the club “was so clean” and he decided to stay on the south coast while his two young children finished school. Whether they discussed how Bournemouth became the draw specialists of last season remains private.

No coach or manager oversaw more stalemates in the Premier League last season than Iraola, whose Bournemouth team were held a remarkable 18 times. It was a league high by a comfortable distance. Leeds in second had 14. Ten came at the Vitality, 52.63% of their home league fixtures, and Bournemouth ultimately missed out on the fifth and final Champions League spot by three points from a Liverpool team that stumbled over the line under Arne Slot.

Over the course of his last 38 league games, Iraola has drawn 21 times. That is a joint record in the Premier League alongside Mark Hughes, whose identical run across 38 games came with Manchester City and Fulham between October 2009 and February 2011. Hughes had a seven-month break between those two jobs, however, making Iraola the first Premier League coach to draw 21 of 38 matches in a continuous sequence.

Interactive The sample size at Liverpool is too small for conclusions, admittedly. Iraola is also still searching for balance and assessing his options, as changes in both full-back positions and central midfield have demonstrated regularly. But the 44-year-old knows full well that a draw with Liverpool is far more damaging to his current employer’s aspirations than his previous one. Three from four league games so far have enabled Arsenal and Manchester City to quickly establish an ominous six-point gap over the 2025 champions. The audible groans that greeted the home draws against Nottingham Forest and Fulham confirmed Anfield’s patience has not recovered from last season’s travails.

“That’s totally fair,” Iraola said of the contrasting reactions to a draw at Liverpool and Bournemouth. “But it’s something that I knew before coming here. When you draw 2-2 at Newcastle with Bournemouth it is probably a good result, but I understand that with Liverpool it is not a good result. The goals of the team are different and the expectations are different as well.”

Fulham was a step backwards, according to Iraola, after two steps forward against Ipswich and Atlético Madrid. A younger, fresher Liverpool team restored momentum with Tuesday’s Carabao Cup win over Tottenham. Elements of that performance were as timely for Iraola as the result. Having demanded greater effort from his forward line following the Fulham draw – and then rested Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz, Bradley Barcola and Victor Muñoz against Spurs – youngsters Lewis Koumas, James McConnell, Rio Ngumoha and Trey Nyoni all made tireless contributions to the cup win in their absences.

Academy players appeared more attuned to Iraola’s methods and instructions than their expensive elders. With Liverpool’s midfield balance also under scrutiny and Wirtz following a good Champions League performance with an indifferent Premier League display, as was often the case last season, Iraola may spend the extended international break wrestling with some big calls depending on how his Bournemouth return unfolds. He has shown himself unafraid of making them.

“For me the demands on the players and positions are the same,” Iraola insisted on Friday. “I don’t give different instructions to one player because he is more expensive than another player who has cost us less money. The demands are always the same. But I also have to adjust to the things that some players can do and others cannot do.

“The strengths and weaknesses of players are different, so we have to always adapt the team to try and maximise the collective side of this. In Bournemouth we had players who could run forever and other players who could not do it. It was not like everyone in Bournemouth was running. Some of them were faster, others were slower, some of them scored more goals, some are good at set pieces. There is no standard player. I feel all the players here are doing everything to try to win and to try and get where we want as quickly as possible. But sometimes I need to adapt too to the players that we have.”

Iraola was asked if he would love 11 players with the mentality of Koumas. “That is a cheating question,” he said, laughing. “I love the desire of Koumas, I love what he gives, but every player has different weaknesses and strengths. He is a good example especially for the players coming from the academy, he is grabbing his opportunity and doing everything to try to gain minutes. But I also have to work with Koumas a lot in other areas. There are things he has to improve.”

Everyone at Liverpool, it seems, is learning on a job that demands the finished article.