As autumn has arrived, Andoni Iraola has quickly reached the point of his first Liverpool season where adept management of his squad is required. And yes, reading that sentence back in August may have sounded like it was about to be followed by a punchline. Liverpool? Squad? What Liverpool squad?
Iraola himself admitted before the start of the season that Liverpool’s options were “quite thin” and their only arrival after that was the £123m signing of Bradley Barcola, another high-class addition, but one who could not possibly bolster Liverpool’s numbers on his own. At a time where Premier League champions Arsenal and Manchester City have built depth, spreading their spending across multiple areas, Liverpool have turned the other way in assembling a team of three £100m+ signings in Barcola, Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz. They ended the transfer window without signing a midfielder, despite the departure of Curtis Jones. While others stockpiled, Liverpool’s gaps remained evident when the window closed.
These were problems Iraola inherited when he replaced Arne Slot and which went unsolved during the final summer of former sporting director Richard Hughes. Yet when injuries have struck Liverpool’s shallow group, stretching the squad even thinner, Iraola has appeared more willing to turn to other options. Forward Lewis Koumas, midfielder Trey Nyoni and winger Rio Ngumoha all started Liverpool’s 6-3 win over LASK in the Champions League on Wednesday and all three are expected to feature against Brentford on Saturday, with Isak, Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai all unlikely to be fit and Ryan Gravenberch serving a one-match suspension following his sending off in the defeat to Manchester City.
The make-up of Liverpool’s squad – essentially a combination of expensively bought or established internationals and academy products or recruited potential at the start of their careers, with very little left in the middle – can lend itself to opportunity, though. Yet, if there can be a time and a place for trusting youth, there is a sense one of Slot’s many problems in his second and final season at Liverpool is that he never really got the grasp of it. Iraola’s approach appears to acknowledge he has little other choice. Liverpool are in a run of six games in 18 days. “In this period, especially, where we are basically playing every three days, less than three days, you need more players,” he said. “We will need everyone in one moment or another.”
Nyoni impressed Iraola enough in pre-season that Liverpool were prepared to go into the campaign without replacing Jones when he joined Inter for £30m. The 19-year-old made several appearances off the bench under Slot last season but only started twice, and did not do so again after a much-changed Liverpool side were knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Crystal Palace amid their wider slump last autumn. Nyoni could make his first Premier League start against Brentford on Saturday and, while it would be down to the absences of Szoboszlai and Gravenberch, it would also feel merited following the assured performances against LASK and Tottenham in the third round of the Carabao Cup.
Iraola has faith that Nyoni can continue to build should he start at Brentford. “Trey is a player that I think, being very young with not a lot of minutes in the first team, he's very mature,” Iraola said. “He understands the situations very well, he understands the game very well. Tactically, I think he's really smart. But he has to continue doing the steps in the right direction. I'm confident with him. He has been involved, I think, in most of the last games, but he has to keep this level of performance, of training. If he has to play as a No 6, as an No 8, he has to play one minute, he doesn't have to play, he has to start and play all the game like [against LASK]. He has to be there, putting pressure also on the other midfielders.
“And I think it's very good for us that we can put [in] these young players with not a lot of experience and they can perform in a competition like the Champions League or in the Premier League.”
It’s necessary, too. It’s extremely unlikely that Liverpool will avoid more injuries during the season even when Isak, Gakpo, Szoboszlai, as well as Hugo Ekitike, return from their absences and it will be down to the likes of the teenagers Nyoni and Nguomha and the 21-year-old Koumas to step up at times throughout the season. But that must also come in the right environment and when those young players are ready for their chance. Iraola has shown he is willing to offer that opportunity. Whether Nyoni can take his moment will reveal much about the options Iraola has been left to work with.