Liverpool’s post-Klopp era is now in its post-Slot stage, and Andoni Iraola’s first outings in the Premier League will tell us a lot about what will come next. Past is prologue, though: Iraola took ten league matches to win his first at Bournemouth before taking them to their highest-ever finish. He won’t have such luxury this time around.
Mohamed Salah, Ibrahima Konaté, and Andy Robertson have all gone, which leaves Liverpool with significant gaps to address as they look to reshape their squad ahead of the new season.
Salah’s departure to Turkey’s Trabzonspor this summer is no doubt the most emotional of the bunch, but the tensions growing along last season with Slot and the nasty power plays involved meant that a parting of the ways was a mutually beneficial decision this time around. How he’ll fare as one of the Süper Lig’s many huge signings will be a fascinating subplot of the European season, especially for Liverpool fans.
£241 million in transfer spending delivered two players and almost no output last season, and it was a large part of why Slot had to go. One of Iraola’s biggest tasks will be getting Isak and Wirtz finally up to speed.
In 2024-25, before signing for the team, Wirtz recorded 16 goals and 14 assists in 45 games for Leverkusen while Isak posted 27 goals and six assists in 42 for Newcastle. Opta’s season preview makes the point that Liverpool would happily take those same numbers now. Both scored against Monaco in pre-season, with Wirtz operating just behind Isak in a 4-2-3-1.
All this goes to show that supporting Liverpool goes beyond the pitch. The club’s followers consume more football content than almost any other fanbase in England, and that appetite now runs well beyond televised games. From long-form documentaries to tactical breakdowns and fan channels, in-house and independent media alike can appeal to fans, even going beyond the beautiful game itself.
That appetite has extended into iGaming, where football has become a themed category of its own. Playtech’s Football Cash Collect and Pragmatic Play’s Big Bass Football Bonanza, to name a few, were released in May, taking familiar slot mechanics and reskinning them for the pitch. They sit among the many football-themed slots online that arrived around the World Cup.
This fandom isn’t going anywhere any time soon, but it relies upon the team continuing to make good decisions and surround themselves with good people, which is why Iraola’s first ten games will be so crucial.
The otherwise ultra-stable ownership situation of the football club also received a spectacular jolt this month, with a Jeff Bezos-backed consortium purchasing a significant but not controlling stake in Liverpool F.C. Ideally, you would expect them to remain in the background and just reap the rewards of a football-literate and historically effective leadership team without rocking the boat, but that is not always the case.
It also makes Iraola’s situation a little more precarious – and it is what brings his slow start at Bournemouth to mind once again. As it showed, a run of six or eight matches contains so much variance that it can very easily conceal the underlying quality of a side in either direction – but it can still be enough to derail a championship campaign for a specific season.
Expected goals and expected points differ from genuine randomness, even if they are often treated as the same in fan discourse. The performances underneath a bad run are real, and these days, we know the metrics are measurable and that they will eventually surface.
Still, you can’t imagine the Kop faithful taking a Bournemouth-like start well, as they desperately want to turn the page on Slot’s soporific sophomore season.
