Liverpool have not won in six, and the case for keeping Iraola is his own first season at Bournemouth

Liverpool have played two Premier League games this season and drawn both. They came from behind at Newcastle to draw 2-2, then came from behind twice against Nottingham Forest at Anfield to draw 2-2 again. Two points, four goals conceded, and a winless run that now reaches six matches once you count the end of last season. That is one of their longest winless runs in recent seasons.

None of which is a sacking offence in early September. It is, though, exactly the kind of start that gets loud at a club where the last two seasons went title, then fifth.

The money keeps arriving and the wins do not

Liverpool completed the signing of Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-Germain before the deadline on 1 September. The guaranteed fee is 106 million pounds with up to 17 million more in add-ons, on a five-year deal, and it makes him the second most expensive player the club has ever bought, behind the 125 million they paid Newcastle for Alexander Isak last summer. He takes the number 29. The move went through with Hugo Ekitike still sidelined by the Achilles injury he suffered in April, and it lands in a forward line that no longer has Mohamed Salah in it.

Set that against the summer of 2025, when Liverpool spent a Premier League record 446 million pounds and then finished fifth as defending champions, and you can see why the patience is thin. This is a squad that has been rebuilt twice in fifteen months and has two points to show for the start of the second attempt.

Bournemouth had this argument in 2023 and got it right

Here is the thing I keep coming back to. Andoni Iraola took nine Premier League games at Bournemouth without a win, collecting three points and dropping into the relegation zone, and by early November his job was reported to be in danger before a home game against Burnley. Bournemouth won that one 2-1, in a comeback, and Iraola’s first Premier League victory arrived at the tenth attempt. The club stuck with him. By the end of that season Bournemouth were mid-table and playing some of the best football in the division, and the manager who could not win in September was being talked about as one of the coaches everybody wanted.

His football takes time to install because it asks for a level of pressing intensity and positional discipline that a squad cannot switch on inside a fortnight. Iraola has said as much himself about the tempo he wants. Two draws in which his team twice came from behind is not a side that has stopped listening to him.

But Liverpool is not Bournemouth, and that cuts both ways

The comparison only goes so far, and I would not lean on it too hard. Bournemouth in 2023 had no expectations to fail, a squad nobody had valued at half a billion, and a board with an obvious incentive to be patient because the alternative was worse. Liverpool have Isak, Barcola and Florian Wirtz, a crowd that watched a title win two summers ago, and a fanbase that is not going to accept “he needs until Christmas” as an answer. The bill for patience is higher here. It gets paid faster.

My honest read is that Iraola is not in trouble yet and could be by the end of the month, and that both of those things can be true at once. Liverpool go to Ipswich Town at Portman Road on Friday, then open their Champions League campaign at home to Atletico Madrid on Wednesday 9 September, with five matches inside 17 days. Ipswich conceded five at Old Trafford last weekend. If there is a game where this Liverpool side gets its first win and stops the conversation, that is the one, and if they do not win it, everything written above about being patient will read differently by Saturday morning.

I would give him the season. I also suspect he will not get it if the six becomes nine.

Read more of our football opinion