Isak fires Liverpool to win on Iraola's emotional Bournemouth return

Isak delivers as Iraola's Liverpool edge past Bournemouth

Andoni Iraola's first return to Bournemouth as Liverpool head coach ended in a hard-fought 1-0 victory, with Alexander Isak capping a peculiar performance to settle a tense affair on the south coast. At the final whistle, victory secured, Iraola embraced both his current players and those he guided to new heights at Bournemouth last season.

A winner on familiar soil

Cody Gakpo was again the architect, the Dutchman the supplier for all four of Isak's goals this season. Isak's only other shot before scoring was to balloon a first-time effort high and wide, but his second-half strike was sufficient to return Liverpool to winning ways in the Premier League. Gakpo easily bypassed Adrien Truffert before crossing from the right; while James Hill dived in to extinguish the threat of Florian Wirtz at the front post, the ball dropped to an unmarked Isak on the edge of the six-yard box to stroke the ball in. From there Bournemouth seemed to run out of juice and Liverpool eked out victory.

Bournemouth had the best chance of the first half, with Alisson producing a smart right-hand save to prevent Evanilson's front-post flick from squeezing in at his near post. Dominik Szoboszlai dropped a typically vicious free-kick wide of Djordje Petrovic's post and Petrovic saved a deflected Bradley Barcola shot with his legs, but Liverpool spent much of the opening period containing Bournemouth's threats.

It was fitting that the bass of Never Tear Us Apart sounded over the speakers as Iraola walked along the front row of the home dugout, shaking hands with his successor Marco Rose's staff. In midweek, Iraola was rooting for his former club on their European bow but promised a businesslike return to Bournemouth and stepped off one of the two Liverpool team coaches with a game face. Tommy Elphick, who captained Bournemouth to the Premier League in 2015 and followed Iraola to Liverpool, embraced old colleagues pitchside before the warm-up, while Szoboszlai and Milos Kerkez shared an embrace with Alex Toth, their Hungary teammate.

Kerkez replaced Kostas Tsimikas at left-back in one of three changes from their stalemate with Fulham. The transition was so smooth that Rose and Iraola spent an hour together on Iraola's last day at Bournemouth's training base, only stopping because Tiago Pinto, Bournemouth's sporting director, interrupted to remind them there were other things on the agenda. "All the niceties," Iraola said, "could wait until afterwards."

From the south coast to Formby

Only 12 months ago Liverpool had won each of their first five Premier League games and were seemingly on their way to defending their crown under Arne Slot. That run started with victory over a Bournemouth side led by Iraola on the opening night. Surely no one thought then that, come the end of the campaign, Iraola would be replacing Slot at Anfield.

Iraola signed a two-year deal with Liverpool in the summer and has swapped the seaside on the south coast for the beach town of Formby, where former Liverpool managers Jurgen Klopp and Brendan Rodgers also resided. By all accounts, he is settling in well. He has been spotted in the city centre on a few occasions and, as a keen cyclist, has enjoyed the coastal routes. But Iraola is most at home on the training ground.

Building a new identity

He is very much a 'six days a week' coach, according to those at Liverpool, and such is his passion for coaching that he is often the first on the training pitch, marking the cones out for sessions. "It's really intense. There's a lot of hard work and no sort of light days. Everyone's putting in 100%," said forward Lewis Koumas.

At Liverpool's AXA Training Centre in Kirkby, Iraola rarely uses his own office and is often found in the coaches room where his assistants in Tommy Elphick, Shaun Cooper and Pablo de la Torre are based. De la Torre, who moved with Iraola from Rayo Vallecano to Bournemouth in 2023, is seen as a key pillar in ensuring that the players are all up to the physical standard Iraola wants. In terms of actual changes inside the club they are not as big as people may think from the outside, given the structured nature of the head coach role.

One of the main reasons they went for Iraola was his ability to develop young talent, and the average age of Liverpool's players in the Premier League this season is 25.3 - only five teams have a lower average. Youngsters like Rio Ngumoha, 18, Trey Nyoni, 19, and Koumas, 20, all started against Tottenham in the Carabao Cup and all three will play bigger roles this season than last. Earlier this week, Szoboszlai explained how Liverpool play with a number six, a number eight and a number 10 - and, despite calls for a defensive midfielder from fans during the transfer window, Iraola's system can work if everyone improves collectively.

Rob Page, who coaches Liverpool Under-21s, said: "We have an understanding of how the first team play and key principles, like how we press, how he [Iraola] wants his number 10 to press, how he wants his number eight to press, how he wants his centre-backs to press - we mirror that absolutely." Of the team's trajectory, Isak offered: "It feels like things are getting better and better."

Managing the load

Iraola's preference is to name the team on the morning of the game and he saves the post-match debrief with his players for the day after the match. He is already aware that, with such a brutal schedule, Liverpool will need to find ways to adapt and occasionally win games with a set-piece or an individual moment of brilliance. Going into this weekend, they had made the most sprints in the Premier League but looked flat against Fulham last weekend in a goalless draw, less than 72 hours after beating Atletico Madrid in the Champions League. Sunday's game against Bournemouth was a fourth in 12 days and, after the international break, Liverpool have a spell of four games in 10 days. Between 11 October and 7 November, they will play nine times.

Iraola said he was "buzzing" when he saw Bournemouth win on their Europa League bow against Real Sociedad on Thursday, in the Basque region where he grew up. Liverpool haven't exactly had a dream start under Iraola but they are yet to lose. Becoming a team that is hard to beat is undoubtedly a step in the right direction after 12 league losses last term, but as vice-captain Alisson said last week, draws aren't good enough for Liverpool. And Iraola, who is unbeaten in the Premier League since January across his two clubs, knows that a win on familiar territory was the perfect way to head into the international break.