When new Liverpool manager Andoni Iraola arrived in the Premier League, little was known of the Basque manager’s coaching credentials, and in truth, even elements of the former Athletic Bilbao right-back’s playing career were relatively mysterious. However, fast forward to today, and the name is now an established one and is well on its way to becoming a household name in the red half of Merseyside at least. 

Few people are better placed to assess Iraola’s impact than former Republic of Ireland goalkeeper Darren Randolph. The experienced stopper witnessed first-hand the standards, methods and mentality that drove Bournemouth’s rise under the former Rayo Vallecano manager. From the training ground to the touchline, Randolph has seen what makes Iraola one of the most highly regarded coaches in European football. 

In this exclusive interview, Randolph reflects on working under Iraola, the culture he has created at Bournemouth, and the qualities that set him apart from his managerial peers. He also offers a unique insight into the demands of Iraola’s playing philosophy, his attention to detail, and why the 43-year-old has quickly established himself as one of the Premier League’s most influential coaches…

I Played Under Andoni Iraola — Here’s What Liverpool Players Are About to Experience!

On first impressions: “I’ll be honest, at first I wasn’t too sure, wasn’t too sure of him, wasn’t too sure of his staff, how it was all going to go, from the first couple of days, but after about two, three weeks, I thought, this guy, he knows what he’s doing, he has his own philosophy, his way of playing and he’s gonna stick to that and he’s gonna find people that will fit into the way that he wants to play. He’s a great guy, there’s no like ego about him, he doesn’t really fall out with people, he just has a weird knack of just kind of getting everybody on board and then if you, if you’re on board and you know what he wants, if you don’t, he doesn’t even like cast people aside, you’re just kind of not involved and you go and kind of do your own thing, but yeah, pretty quickly, you got to understand kind of who he was, what he’s about and how he wants to play and either you buy in or, it’s not even like a buy-in or you’re out the door, it’s just you buy in now and I’ll deal with the rest later on.”

On his methods: “I’ve worked with a lot of managers that have been around in the game for ages or are quite new to the game, it just has a knack of getting everybody on board and getting his ideas across, so you know exactly what he expects, there’s no, I mean, the big clubs, even a club like Liverpool, I remember speaking to like Kelleher and Adrian and even Andy Lonergan, all goalkeepers by the way, there’s no days off, like when Klopp was in, there’s no days off where you might get one day off and he reluctantly gives you a day off because every day is, we’re working towards how we want to play or how we need to press against, you know, whatever team is coming up. He and his staff, you know, their attention to detail is scary. He just understands everything, and he just sees like four or five situations that he’ll set up in one. Still, in the setup for, if you set up for one situation, you can then react to three different ones, do you know what I mean? Everyone needs to be switched on, and everyone is very big on maybe giving players the responsibility, so he’ll set up in a certain way, but everybody will know their jobs, and everybody might have three to four to five things to do, depending on what happens in the game. And like I said, it’s very, it’s special, there’s only very kind of few managers that can do that and work you as hard as he does and keep everybody on side and you see with Bournemouth like how it’s worked, the players that have been brought in and then also the players that have been sold on because they’ve done so well, you know, under him in a season. So I think for Liverpool fans, like be excited, from having like been around and playing and played against like Klopp’s teams, it’s very similar. It’s like in possession, it’s high tempo, you might see people just running like everywhere and there’s lots of interchanging but you’re still set up in a way that when you lose the ball, you’re ready to press and you’ll press high, the press is very aggressive and yeah, you just overwhelm, he seems to be able to overwhelm teams and swamp teams and I don’t know, it just works, somehow it just works, that’s why he’s a manager and I’m not, it just makes sense.”

On pre-season: “It was in Marbella. I think we were there for 10 days, I think 10 days. From speaking to people like Adrian, Kelleher and Lonners about the club, I know kind of roughly how they worked, how they trained. Don’t know about Slot, how he worked, but with Iraola coming in, it could be a shock to the system, depending on how they’ve just been training. But it’s intense. You know, you can have anywhere from two to three to four sessions a day, whether it’s on the pitch, in the gym, in the meeting room. It’s quite a lot of information to take on at first, but when you get it, it becomes easier. And then you’re so conditioned to training that if you have two sessions in a day, you’re like, it’s fine. You just get through it. And obviously, he built that kind of squad at Bournemouth. He’d do the same at Liverpool. Like you’re going to have the players where if he changes people, it might be a like-for-like. And then if it is like a young player, they’ll know exactly what to do when they come on. People will get fit very quickly. There’s a lot of running, just a lot of work basically. But once you, once you nail down the basics, it’s almost, it’s weird. It almost becomes easier. He is, he’s like in the middle of the pitch in amongst the patterns of play, talking to players individually, like, you know, don’t go now. Yes, go now. Like Darren, come in here, Dan, get back in here, Dan, go down. So he’s talking to you as it’s going, as it’s going on to help you understand exactly what he wants. And he’s, he’s right in there, you’ll see him on the sideline. He can get very animated. He’ll be kicking imaginary footballs. He’ll be sticking his leg out to block imaginary shots. Literally all he wants is for people to run as hard as they can, as quickly as they can and do what he asks. And if you last an hour, not a problem, you’ve done your job, come off, someone else will come on, and they only have, you know, half an hour to sprint and run around. And it’s no coincidence, you know, some of the players that were brought into Bournemouth that played, they were, they were only there for a season, or if they’d been there for the three years he’s been there, they’re now moving on to other clubs, or they may have got a call up to the national teams. He just, he’s an individual that somehow you just like, and you want to see him do well. I think even if he was horrible to me, I probably would have left and thought, ‘You know what? I like you. I still want to see you do well.'”

On man-management: “I kind of knew my role going into Bournemouth. I was there as, you know, second or third choice, being an experienced kind of player. But also, that’s what I saw myself as. I wasn’t expecting to go there and play every week. At that time, I was 36, but Neto had been there. He played a few years with Mark Travers, a younger Irish guy who was mean, and there were a couple of other keepers a bit younger than me. So I kind of knew my place, but you still want to go in and train hard and work and think, you know, if something happens, I’m ready. And I want, like, if something happens, I want you to have faith in me to play. I had, you know, several conversations with him. I kind of said to him what I expected. He said to me what he expected. I’ve had a lot of managers. I can name on one hand, you know, probably the managers that I would want to play for to do well, he was one of them. And I just thought, well, you know what, if I’m not going to play, I’m at least going to show up every day and at least train well and drive, like, try and drive the standards, whether I’m involved in, like, match play, team play stuff, or we’re doing shooting or there’s defending and I’m chucked in to a goal or whatever else, like, you want to try and add something to the team, the squad.”

On the fit at Liverpool: “Andoni working with Richard Hughes, again, who’s a brilliant man, like a top man. Those two working back together again at a club the size of Liverpool with the players that are kind of at their disposal. You’ll see an improvement in the first season, but wait till season two, three, and it could be, it could be unbelievable. You could have, like, literally Klopp time back, do you know what I mean? I’m just thinking of like what he did at, what he did at Bournemouth. Imagine what he could do at Liverpool. He could be a massive name. As I said, you look at the players he’s grown up with when he was playing in, he said to me one time when he played at New York, he was in the team at New York with Pirlo, Lampard, and Viera as manager. Like he’s been there, he’s been there, done it. He knows exactly what he wants. So the potential and the excitement from having worked with him to what it could be in a big club, it’s scary.”

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On his style: “The way that he works and the build-up to games, he almost has an answer for a response to everything. It just depends if the players can carry out what he’s asked them to do. With Bournemouth, there’s been plenty of results and performances where people are like, “Wow, how have they done that?” But he has the players there that are young enough, hungry enough, with a point to prove. And then all it takes is like a game where he says, right, this is our plan. I want you all to do this. Once the players do this and they see it works, they’re like, Jesus Christ, this works. And then the belief, the belief comes like, that’s what I said earlier, like the players, you need to believe and buy into him and his philosophy and what he’s asking you to do. If you do what he asks you to do, it’s going to go well. Like, he’s not a man that people are going to say, I hate him. He’s not a man that people are going to say, like, he was rude to me. He’s got an ego. His man-management skills are terrible. Like his man management, again, maybe it comes from him being a player. I know they say some of the best managers are failed players, you know, whatever else. But maybe it’s because he was a player. He just has this knack of getting everybody on board. And you’ll see very quickly in games, and it may be different with Liverpool, because I guess if you’re a Bournemouth player, he’s going to make people press aggressively. I think there was only one game I remember where he went away from his pressing. I think it was Man City. We lost the game. And he said to one of the assistants, never, ever let me do that again. Like, I’m going to stick to what I believe in. Because once he kind of went, I think because they just couldn’t, they were struggling to get the ball back, he went against his principles and what he taught, and he went to Tommy Elphick, they’d never let me do that again. I’m sticking to what I want to do. And again, all due respect to, you know, Bournemouth and the players there, as I said, great players that will go on from Bournemouth to kind of almost bigger and better things. But if he’s playing that same way with Liverpool against Man City, I don’t think he’d ever feel the need to maybe go away from what he believes in. He just has a knack for getting everyone to believe in the same thing, in the same kind of goals and what they want to achieve. So, yeah. And as you said, once you’ve seen that work and you’ve got the result off the back of it and you’ve managed to execute his plan, that then instils a belief amongst the group of say, this guy is onto something. And if we just follow his lead, the likelihood is we’ll be successful as a team and individually, as you’ve seen, the results definitely followed suit as well. Even when he came in, there were ex-players who were there, so they were always very vocal. But again, when he came in, he knew the likes of Elphick and Cooper would come in and be on his side. But again, he would delegate different stuff to them for them to relay. He lets everyone have their say in the changing room. Everything is up on the TV screens, running through set pieces and patterns of play. That’s on the screens, on the whiteboards, there’s still stuff up there. Again, he’ll have his team talks, and he’ll give you maybe three to five basic things he’s after in the game. And if you do those three to five basic things while being switched on to the set pieces and everything else, you’ll win the game. He’s that detailed and that meticulous in what he does.”