Andoni Iraola's Coaching Team at Liverpool: A Focus on Set-Pieces

Andoni Iraola did not arrive at Anfield alone. He walked through the doors with a carefully chosen brain trust, a backroom team he believes will be central to fixing one of Liverpool’s most glaring flaws: their vulnerability from set pieces.

Iraola’s inner circle comes to Anfield

Since succeeding Arne Slot last month, the Spaniard has quietly reshaped the coaching structure while keeping one eye firmly on continuity. Several familiar faces from Bournemouth have followed him north.

Tommy Elphick, a boyhood Liverpool supporter, and Shaun Cooper have stepped in as first-team coaches. Pablo de la Torre, Iraola’s long-time ally, has joined as assistant coach. Alejandro Rosalen arrives as first-team goalkeeping coach after five years at Napoli.

This is not a vanity entourage. It is a group built on years of shared work and trust.

“For me, it was important they came with me,” Iraola said, ahead of his first game in charge of Liverpool, a pre-season friendly against Sunderland in Nashville on Saturday.

De la Torre is the clearest example of that bond. The pair worked together at AEK Larnaca and again at Rayo Vallecano, and Iraola leans on him far beyond the job title.

“Pablo is a physical coach but has been with me almost all the years I have been coaching,” he explained. “So, for me, he is much more than a physical coach really. He is an assistant and we know each other very well.”

That familiarity will matter in a dressing room that is about to discover a very different voice.

Lessons from Bournemouth

If De la Torre is the long-time confidant, Elphick and Cooper are the product of circumstance that turned into opportunity.

Iraola arrived at Bournemouth last year expecting to be joined by his assistant Iñigo Pérez from Rayo Vallecano. The move fell apart when Pérez was denied a work permit. It could have left a hole at the heart of his staff. Instead, it opened the door.

“I was very lucky with Tommy and Shaun when I arrived at Bournemouth,” Iraola said. The misfortune with Pérez “worked out very well for him because now he is coaching Villarreal. Maybe we play him in the Champions League.”

The line was light, but the point behind it was serious. In Elphick and Cooper, he found two coaches who not only understood the Premier League but understood the nuances of English dressing rooms and training grounds.

“With Tommy and Shaun there, we did not feel the need to bring in another assistant,” Iraola said. “They were very prepared, they were very helpful for me in terms of understanding the English culture, the mentality of the players, what they were used to, what they like in training, even the small details that maybe in Spain are different.”

Elphick’s career – Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Brighton, Huddersfield – gives him a natural proximity to the players that Iraola values.

“Also the experience Tommy has at Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Brighton, Huddersfield; they can be in a closer position to the players. They can feel more identified. I am a little bit older. Some of the players maybe didn’t know I was a player.”

That honesty is telling. Iraola knows his ideas must travel through voices the players instinctively trust. Elphick and Cooper are there to be that bridge.

Fixing Liverpool’s set-piece problem

Trust alone will not be enough. This staff has been assembled with a clear tactical brief in mind.

Liverpool’s set-piece record last season was alarming. They conceded 23 goals from dead-ball situations in what turned out to be Slot’s final campaign as head coach. Only Bournemouth (26), Crystal Palace (25) and Leeds (24) were worse.

For a club with title ambitions, that number is brutal.

“They are very good coaches,” Iraola said of his staff. “We kind of understand the game similarly and they have different roles in the coaching staff, they help with set pieces also. That’s the reason I continued with them.”

The division of labour is sharp and specific. Elphick will take charge of defensive set plays. Cooper will focus on the attacking routines, the more “offensive, more creative ones,” as Iraola put it.

There is another piece already in place. Lewis Mahoney, Liverpool’s set-piece analyst, impressed in the second half of last season and remains a key figure.

“We are working very well here with the set-piece analyst [Lewis Mahoney], who was very good in the second half of last season,” Iraola said. “He is already with the club, so they are working on some stuff.”

That “stuff” will define training-ground detail over the coming weeks. New movements. Different blocks. Tweaked starting positions. Clearer responsibilities. The kind of marginal gains Liverpool have too often left on the table.

A new structure, a clear mandate

What emerges is a picture of a head coach who knows exactly what he wants around him. Long-time lieutenants to carry his methods. Local specialists to translate them. Analysts to sharpen them.

The first glimpse of this new Liverpool comes in Nashville against Sunderland. The stakes will be low. The scrutiny will not.

Set pieces have already cost this club too much. Iraola has built a staff to make sure that story does not repeat.