Liverpool's Andoni Iraola Urges for Winger Reinforcements

Andoni Iraola is starting his first Premier League season at Liverpool with a blunt admission: he doesn’t have enough wingers.

The new Liverpool head coach, who replaced Arne Slot this summer, is pushing for reinforcements out wide before the transfer window closes – and he is not hiding the urgency.

Wingers wanted – and fast

Liverpool have already seen a £50m bid for Brighton’s Yankuba Minteh knocked back this week and have explored a move for Paris St-Germain’s Ibrahim Mbaye. PSG’s Bradley Barcola remains the primary target as the club look to add pace and goals in the wide attacking areas before deadline day.

“As a manager, this is an easy one for me. I wanted the players for the first day on 13 July – everyone here and all the positions doubled with top-level players,” Iraola said when asked about the state of the window.

That ideal never came close.

“But you understand how the competition works, that (the) market is open and you start the competition. We have to adapt as coaches to this situation.

“I hate these two weeks or these 10 days that we have because there is a lot of uncertainty – but not in Liverpool, everywhere. But we have to adapt.”

The message is clear: the squad is short in key areas, and the clock is ticking.

Thin on the flanks, busy in the market

Since Iraola walked through the doors at Anfield, Liverpool have moved decisively in other positions. Victor Munoz has arrived for £34.5m, while Ronald Araujo has joined on loan from Barcelona to bolster the back line. Jeremy Jacquet, the French centre-half signed from Rennes in a £60m deal agreed back in January, has also linked up with the squad.

But those deals have not solved the issue Iraola keeps circling back to.

“You are asking me what we need – there are certain situations that for me are clear – especially now on the wing because we don't have enough players specific to play in those positions,” he said.

“And then in other positions, I think we have to be open-minded in the market to see situations that honestly can improve our team.

“It's not about signing because we need a player here. No, it's about improving the squad. And we have very good players already here, so to improve our very good players, you need like a specific level of player, yes.”

The bar is high. The need is obvious. That combination tends to push clubs deep into the final days of the window.

Salah gone, Robertson gone – and Jones on the way out

Part of the tension comes from what Liverpool have lost.

Mohamed Salah, Andy Robertson and Ibrahima Konate have all left the club over the summer, stripping away experience and, in Salah’s case, elite end product from the forward line. Curtis Jones is also in Italy to complete a £30m move to Inter Milan, a departure Iraola has met with respect and a hint of inevitability.

“With Curtis, you know. I think it's still not official but there is an ongoing situation. I understood with Curtis. I talked to him. I think in the first or second training session we talked,” Iraola explained.

“I value him a lot as a player. He loved this club – it was very clear since the beginning for me – but I understood that probably the outcome was going to be what it has been at the end.

“I've never hid it – for me Curtis is a very good player. A very, very good player, but I understood straight away when he talked to me about his situation. It was a situation that could happen and it looks like it is going to happen.”

So while the squad is being reshaped, it is also being stripped back. That reality is feeding directly into the urgency in the market.

“We will definitely sign some players”

Inside Anfield, there is an expectation that Liverpool’s window will ignite late. Iraola has already hinted several times – including during the club’s pre-season tour of the USA when discussing defensive options – that the squad is “quite thin” in several areas.

Speaking to Jamie Carragher on Sky Sports, he sharpened that point.

“We will definitely sign some players. Some deals you have to wait until the end. But the end is the important picture, the one we will have on September 1. Because it is true that we are still quite thin.”

That date now looms over every training session and every phone call between Liverpool’s recruitment team and their counterparts across Europe.

Iraola wanted his squad complete on 13 July. He will settle for 1 September. What happens in between may define his first season on Merseyside.