Iraola had to make himself available to get the next big thing that’s coming. The Premier League is going to be extremely competitive next season.
These are brilliant, young coaches handling teams with so much resources and potential.
Arteta, Maresca, Alonso, Iraola, Carrick. Young coaches with so much quality and a good measure of level-headedness to handle big clubs. Next season may be the most interesting season in the history of the Premier League. It’s the year of the transition.
Arsenal want to consolidate and go at it again, try to begin an era they think they can dominate. Maresca will want to prove a point that he’s in the big leagues too. Carrick wants the return of glory days at Man Utd. Iraola will want to lay a marker and say he’s for the biggest levels in the game. Alonso will want to make the most of Chelsea. Remember he has good control.
Then their senior, Emery looking over and competing. There’s Marco Rose at Bournemouth too. Eddie Howe at Newcastle. Lampard at Coventry. McKenna at Ipswich will try to show he’s not just for the Championship. The links with the big teams have to be earned. Le Bris is also there at Sunderland, trying to show they’re not just a one-time thing.
Fabian Hurzeler is there trying to shoot higher and prove his mettle. Who’ll Palace name?
Nine of these coaches will be in Europe next season.
Arteta, Emery, Iraola, Alonso all from the same backyard.
Naah, it’s the season to watch. A special one.
🚨🎙️Jamie Carragher on why Liverpool must sack Arne Slot after the 4-2 defeat to Aston Villa if they want to return to the top:
“I’ve held my tongue for months because I love this club and I wanted to give Arne Slot the benefit of the doubt after what he did last season. But enough is enough. This 4-2 capitulation at Villa Park yesterday in our final away game of a season that’s been an absolute disaster, is the final straw.
Let’s be crystal clear, if Liverpool are serious about getting back to where we belong, competing at the very top, challenging for titles, not scrambling for a Champions League spot on the last day then they have to sack Arne Slot now. Not in the summer. Not after another window of ‘trust the process.’ Act. Today.
Look at the cold, hard facts of his tenure. He won the league in his first season off the back of Jurgen’s squad and that incredible momentum. Fair play. But this 25/26 season? It’s been a collapse like we’ve never seen. Slot has now overseen 20 defeats in all competitions, the most by any Liverpool manager in a single season in the club’s entire history. He broke Rafael Benítez’s unwanted record of 19. Twenty losses. That’s not a blip, that’s a catastrophe.
In the Premier League alone, we’ve conceded a club-record 52 goals, the first time ever over 50 in a 38-game season. Set-pieces? We’ve been the worst team in Europe’s top five leagues on them all year. Leaking goals from dead balls like it’s amateur hour. And this after a huge summer spending spree – over £400 million on new attackers like Alexander Isak and Hugo Ekitike, supposedly to make us even stronger. Instead? We’ve gone backwards. More open, more end-to-end basketball, less control. The recruitment was all attack and no balance. Pre-season screamed it, the first game against Bournemouth screamed it, and it’s never been fixed.
Analytically, the underlying numbers don’t lie. No improvement from day one to the final whistle. Zero. The drop-off from title winners to this fragile mess has been stark – worse points-per-game runs than some of the darkest periods under Hodgson or even early Rodgers in stretches. We’ve had five straight domestic defeats, nine losses in 12 at one point, historic lows not seen since the 1950s. Defensively? Organised chaos. Midfield overrun. No leadership when it matters. Players look confused, not coached into a system that suits them. Injuries? Every club has them. You can’t hide behind that after blowing the bank on marquee signings who haven’t delivered.
This isn’t just about one bad result. This is a manager whose weakness traits have been exposed week after week: inability to fix set-piece defending, poor in-game adjustments, over-reliance on individual moments rather than a coherent structure, and a squad that looks less than the sum of its parts despite the spending.
Liverpool fans deserve better than this. We’ve been spoilt, yeah, but that’s the standard. We don’t accept mediocrity. We don’t accept ‘give him another window’ when the evidence is screaming the opposite. FSG, the board, if you care about the badge, the fans, the history… sack Slot now. Bring in someone who can rebuild this properly before another season slips away.”