Andoni Iraola officially under serious pressure at Liverpool

Andoni Iraola has only had three games in charge of Liverpool but he's officially under serious pressure. How will he react?

Liverpool have their first win of the season and their first win under Andoni Iraola. It was a well-deserved one, too, as they saw off Ipswich Town 2-0 away from home.

Even better, we saw a genuine partnership pop up for the Reds. Cody Gakpo and Alexander Isak were entirely on the same wavelength, with the former assisting the latter for both brilliant goals.

What more can you want?

But coming out of that one, Iraola walks into a world of extra pressure. An intense amount, in fact, and we’d argue more than Arne Slot ever really faced as Liverpool head coach.

There’s a good reason for that, too. Richard Hughes is gone as sporting director and that means the man who hired Iraola is no longer there. That carries a lot of weight - Hughes was the one putting his neck on the line by hiring the Spaniard, now no one has their reputation riding on him.

Slot, for instance, was also Hughes’s hire. We saw how difficult that made things as there can’t be much of a question that a genuine reluctance to admit defeat kept the Dutchman in the role much longer than he likely should have been.

But that’s natural. A sporting director will be hesitant to go back on his major call of hiring a head coach as it feels like a failure. That offers the coach a level of protection and faith. Not to mention that if he was hired by the sporting director, he can feel confident that man in charge of his employment wants him to do things his way.

That’s no longer the case for Iraola. He has none of that. There’s no real protection of anyone’s reputation at stake and he won’t be the appointment of any new sporting director.

And if that director wants things done a different way, what’s really stopping him from hiring someone new? Especially if Iraola goes through a poor run of form in charge.

Hughes’s exit - which we did all know was coming - has piled pressure on his head coach hire.