Iraola took Bournemouth into Europe and left, and he goes back on Sunday with a Liverpool side that has drawn three of four

Andoni Iraola walks back into the Vitality Stadium at 6:30pm India time on Sunday, in the away dugout, for the first time since he stopped being Bournemouth’s manager. He left them sixth in the Premier League and qualified for Europe. He arrives with a Liverpool side that has drawn three of its first four league games.

What he built at Bournemouth

Iraola was appointed on 19 June 2023, straight after Gary O’Neil was sacked, and the sequence of finishes reads like a staircase: 12th, ninth, sixth. The first of those, 48 points in 2023-24, was already the best season in the club’s history. The last one, in May, put Bournemouth into European competition for the first time ever, sealed by an 18-match unbeaten run through the second half of the campaign.

Consider where that club had been. Eighteen years ago Bournemouth were on minus 17 points in the fourth tier of English football with the administrators in the building. On Thursday they played their first European match, away at Real Sociedad in San Sebastian, and won it 2-1. Justin Kluivert scored in the 11th minute, Rayan headed in nine minutes later, and Sergio Gomez’s reply was not enough to stop them taking three points out of Spain on their debut.

Iraola confirmed on 14 April that he was going at the end of the season. Liverpool announced him on 4 June, on a two-year contract, after Arne Slot’s exit at the end of May.

What he has walked into

The Liverpool that Iraola inherited had been taken apart over the summer. Mohamed Salah left for Trabzonspor on a free transfer after nine seasons. Ibrahima Konate went to Real Madrid, also for nothing. Andy Robertson joined Tottenham on the same terms, and Curtis Jones was sold to Inter for £25.7m. In came Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-Germain, Jeremy Jacquet from Rennes for £55m and Victor Munoz from Osasuna for £34.5m.

Four league games later, Liverpool are unbeaten with six points. That is less of a contradiction than it sounds. They drew 2-2 with Newcastle, drew 2-2 with Nottingham Forest, won 2-0 at Ipswich through two early Alexander Isak goals, and drew 0-0 with Fulham at Anfield. Six points from a possible twelve is the sort of start that gets a new manager asked, politely at first, whether his players have understood him yet. Beating Tottenham 3-1 in the League Cup on 15 September helped the mood without answering the question.

Marco Rose has the opposite problem

Bournemouth replaced Iraola with Marco Rose, appointed on 1 June, who had been out of work since RB Leipzig sacked him in March 2025. His team have led in all six of their matches in all competitions this season. They have won two, and one of those was against Lincoln City in the League Cup.

In the league it goes: beaten 2-1 at Manchester City, then 1-1 against Everton, 2-2 at Newcastle and 2-2 against Brentford, the last of which slipped away through a goalkeeping error. They have conceded in all four. A side that gets its nose in front every single week and turns it into three points once in six has a specific and fixable problem, which is more than Rose could say about most of his time at Leipzig.

The last time these two met

On 24 January 2026, with Iraola still in the home dugout, Bournemouth beat Liverpool 3-2 at this ground. Evanilson and Alex Jimenez put them two up inside 33 minutes, Virgil van Dijk and Dominik Szoboszlai hauled Liverpool level, and Amine Adli won it in the fifth minute of stoppage time.

Iraola knows how his old players will be asked to set up against him. They know what he will want from his new ones. Those two pieces of knowledge tend to cancel out into an awkward afternoon rather than a clean one.

Liverpool need the win more than the fixture suggests. Six points from four is survivable in September and corrosive by November, and Iraola’s reputation was built on a team that pressed high and scored late, not one that draws 0-0 at home to Fulham. Bournemouth get to find out what they are without him, against him, three days after the best night in their history.

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