When Roy Hodgson made the step up from Fulham to manage Liverpool, he was reigning Manager of the Year and understandably sure of himself as a coach.
His reputation for tactical knowledge and intelligence had been built across two-and-a-half decades and more than half-a-dozen countries. What he was not prepared for was working at a club like Liverpool.
‘He didn’t understand it when he walked in and he still didn’t fully understand it when he was asked to walk out again a few months later,’ a source who was there at the time tells Daily Mail Sport.
‘It’s different at a really big club and it’s especially different at a club like Liverpool. It’s not just about the football. It’s about what you do, what you say and how you carry yourself.
‘It’s nuanced and every part of it matters. That sounds daft and exaggerated. But it’s true. Roy thought his football pedigree and coaching was all that mattered and he was wrong.’
As Liverpool manager, the spotlight is on Andoni Iraola in a way he will never have experienced before
Roy Hodgson could not handle the Liverpool job despite his vast experience. ‘He didn’t understand it when he walked in and he didn’t understand it when he walked out,’ a source tells Daily Mail Sport
Taking the step up in football management always feels like a defining moment in a career. Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United managed it, eventually. So did Arsene Wenger. Eddie Howe’s switch from Bournemouth to Newcastle was seamless.
Others, more recently, have struggled.
Graham Potter fell on his face at Chelsea after leaving Brighton. Thomas Frank’s transition from Brentford to Tottenham proved too much. Ruben Amorim swapped Lisbon for United and drowned.
And now it’s Andoni Iraola’s turn. The 44-year-old Spaniard returns to his old club Bournemouth on Sunday still feeling his way as manager of Liverpool. Three wins and three draws from six opening games is an acceptable return but the size of the step up cannot be overstated.
For Liverpool’s opening pre-season game against Sunderland in Nashville – Iraola’s first as manager – there were 25,000 fans present. That’s twice as many as ever watched Bournemouth at their tiny stadium on the south coast. The level of expectation and scrutiny is incomparable.
‘That’s the key difference,’ says a source who watched Frank’s struggles at Tottenham closely. ‘At Brentford, every Premier League win Thomas gave them was a gift. They were grateful. It’s a bonus.
‘At Tottenham and other top clubs, it’s not like that. Three points are a minimum requirement. And then you have to play the right kind of football and say the right things. By the time Thomas started to get to grips with that, it was too late.’
For Liverpool’s opening pre-season game against Sunderland in Nashville – Iraola’s first as manager – there were 25,000 fans present
Thomas Frank could not make the step up from Brentford to Tottenham and eventually lost his job
Iraola is a well-respected and talented coach. His two previous postings have been successful, at Bournemouth – who he took into Europe – and Rayo Vallecano in Spain.
On that tour of America, Liverpool players were impressed with his sessions and expressed surprise at just how much time he spent with them on the grass, ball in hand and whistle in mouth.
Those on the trip talk of an easy charm and natural sense of calm. What is yet to emerge – simply because it hasn’t had to – is the depth and strength of his personality, steel and emotional intelligence.
‘There are some strong characters in that Liverpool dressing room,’ explains one agent to a first-team player. ‘There are egos. Others may use stronger words.
‘Look what happened between Mo Salah and Arne Slot. That’s where the power balance can shift. At Bournemouth his word will have been law. Here, he may have to earn that right a little bit.’
Players are more powerful than ever in modern football. What they say and do matters more than it ideally should and they are not always rational judges.
Frank, for example, asked one first-team player to apologise for being late to a Champions League team meeting last season only to be met with refusal. At Chelsea, some of the club’s bloated squad called Potter ‘Harry’ behind his back.
On one occasion, a member of the Stamford Bridge ownership tried to pick the team for a talented coach. He had never even attended a Champions League match before selecting a Chelsea XI for one.
In the post-Ferguson era at United, meanwhile, David Moyes – hired from Everton – was suffocated by a combination of player scepticism, modest results and a lack of understanding of how you were expected to talk and behave at the biggest club in the land.
At Chelsea, some of the club’s bloated squad called Graham Potter ‘Harry’ behind his back
At Old Trafford back in 2013, players used to joke that the infamous Portuguese flop Bebe had more medals than the new manager. On a plane back from a European game, meanwhile, they chuckled when they saw Moyes reading a book on management.
‘The players were in charge,’ left back Patrice Evra told Daily Mail Sport at his book launch five years ago.
These things really shouldn’t matter but unfortunately they do and to what extent depends in part on the standing of the manager who came before. Iraola is replacing Slot who was sacked but only after winning the Premier League. The memory of Jurgen Klopp still lingers, meanwhile.
Klopp possessed a charisma, turn of phrase and political outlook that fell neatly in step with those on the Kop. He was smart, too. One of his first tactics, for example, was to reduce the very size of the football club in his head by learning the name of every single person who worked at the training ground. That was for them. But it was for him, too.
Again the contrast with the unfortunate Hodgson – sacked after taking 25 points from a possible 60 in the 2010-11 season – is stark. Hodgson, remember, was no ingenue. He had previously managed Inter Milan and the Swiss national team and had taken Fulham to the final of the Europa League only weeks before his appointment. He was an elite coach. Liverpool, however, is just different.
‘Klopp just understood the club and its quirks,’ explains another source. ‘Rafael Benitez – Roy’s predecessor – did too. And indeed Brendan Rodgers later on. At Liverpool, the media need to be indulged, as do certain fans’ groups. Your language needs to reflect that, too.
‘Iraola, for example, will be examined in a different way to how Enzo Maresca will be by Manchester City fans. Even though his job is, on the surface, a significantly harder one.
‘How many people were listening to what he said at Bournemouth? At Liverpool, everybody is listening to it. Every word of it. And they will soon be dissecting it on podcasts and looking for hidden meanings that often are not even there.
‘One of Roy’s most memorable errors came when Ferguson accused Fernando Torres of diving and he didn’t bite back. He basically said he wasn’t getting involved. Torres was his best player and a Kop idol. To the fans, Roy left him hanging there after a verbal assault by our greatest rival. As Liverpool manager you just can’t do that.’
David Moyes found the step up from Everton manager to boss of Manchester United too great
Manchester City fans call on United to keep the faith with Moyes – for their own selfish reasons
Liverpool’s style of football will also be interesting to observe under Iraola. At Bournemouth, his team were smart. Counter-pressing became an art form and they were, at times, comfortable not to have the ball even at home.
His team’s average possession, for example, was less than 50 per cent. That’s OK for a club looking to punch above its weight by way of its results. It’s not for a club like Liverpool. Klopp’s teams averaged 62 per cent while Slot’s sat at 59 per cent.
So far Iraola’s metrics are good. Only in the 2-1 home win over Atletico Madrid did the number drop below 50 per cent while even in draws against Newcastle and Nottingham Forest they were comfortably on the right side of 50 per cent.
This was one of the things that did for Frank at Spurs, according to those close to the club. ‘The players liked Thomas,’ says a source. ‘It’s impossible not to like Thomas. But they thought his football was too often built around what he thought the opposition would do.
‘Sometimes his team’s xG (expected goals) was almost minus. That may occasionally be OK at Brentford but never at Tottenham. At a club like this one you have to get on the front foot. Our house, our rules.’
Iraola seems to have avoided any obvious banana skins so far but he has not yet been placed under real pressure.
When asked about the step up in Friday’s press conference, he said: ‘For me the demands on the players are the same. I don’t give different instructions to one player because he is more expensive than another player because he has cost us less money.
‘The demands are the same. The strengths and weaknesses of players are different, so we have to always adapt the team to try and maximise the collective side of this. In Bournemouth, we had players who could run forever and other players who could not do it.
‘When you draw 2-2 at Newcastle with Bournemouth, it is a good result, but I understand that with Liverpool it is not. The goals of the team are different and so are the expectations.’
Last season under Slot was so miserable that his successor is working with some afforded leeway. That will only last so long. Two or three poor results would soon change the atmosphere and narrative, especially given the fast start made at the top of the Premier League by Arsenal and City.
It was interesting to hear Iraola say how hard it was for his team to face Fulham on Saturday having played in Europe in midweek. As we know, that is the way of life at the sharp end of our game. It simply will not wash as mitigation.
It was interesting to hear Iraola say how hard it was for his team to face Fulham on Saturday having played in Europe in midweek
Tottenham fans show their frustrations at the club during Frank’s time in charge
There are always uncontrollable reasons contributing to failure, of course. Managers by and large inherit problems.
Potter’s Chelsea was a madhouse while Frank’s Tottenham finished 17th the season before. This season’s Spurs manager – Roberto De Zerbi – has been given £300million of new players for a reason.
Back in the day at United meanwhile, Moyes was dealt an almost impossible hand once Ferguson left the building with all the club’s recruitment processes buried in the back of his head. Some experienced players simply didn’t try hard enough while Old Trafford executives have since acknowledged they failed the Scot.
‘We should have helped him more,’ said former CEO Ed Woodward and it’s not by co-incidence that Moyes and indeed Hodgson have gone on to prove their enduring worth elsewhere.
Undoubtedly, though, there were some spectacular errors. Moyes’ decision to lead his squad for a walk on Sydney’s Bondi Beach on his one and only pre-season tour was taken despite warnings of impending chaos by club security.
‘It’s fine, I did it with Everton,’ said Moyes. By the time the United party had required a hastily-convened police escort to get them safely back to the team hotel, Moyes had come to understand that Everton was one kind of football club – with one kind of global standing – and United was quite another.
Such colourful tales make for great podcast chat and help to sell books. Equally, they matter. Perception matters.
Still with United, the recently departed Ruben Amorim couldn’t understand why he was required to do so many media interviews each week. Hodgson, meanwhile, once bit back at a young journalist asking about his tactics with all the patience of a surgeon who had just been told he was holding his scalpel the wrong way.
At United, Moyes was dealt an almost impossible hand once Sir Alex Ferguson left the building with all the club’s recruitment processes buried in the back of his head
Ruben Amorim couldn’t understand why he was required to do so many media interviews each week while he was manager of Manchester United
‘I just don’t understand what it has to do with them,’ he subsequently told a staffer. And that’s the point. You either instinctively get it at a big club or you don’t. And if you need to learn, you must do so quickly.
Potter – still coming to terms with what happened at Chelsea and indeed West Ham if some of his recent social media exchanges are anything to go by – said philosophically recently that: ‘You are never quite as good or quite as bad as people say.’
He is absolutely right about that. But how a manager goes about influencing those judgments at a big club really does matter.
Slot – endlessly respectful of his predecessor’s achievements – got it right for a while at Liverpool. It was his results that got him in the end and they will be the prime metric for Iraola. But Hodgson departed a decade-and-a-half ago lamenting that he never got to feel the famous love from the Kop.
The point is that you have to know how to earn it.
