I'll save you the suspense: entering 2026-27, no manager in the Premier League is sitting on a hotter seat than Andoni Iraola, and no club is carrying more pressure than Liverpool.
Want to argue for someone else? Go ahead. Enzo Maresca has to follow Pep Guardiola, whose ten-year reign at Manchester City just ended. Xabi Alonso got the Chelsea job less than 24 hours after an FA Cup final loss to City. Michael Carrick made himself permanent at Manchester United after they sacked Ruben Amorim mid-season. This was the biggest upheaval at the top of the Premier League in over ten years, falling just short of the record 14 managerial sackings set in 2022/23. A joint-record seven clubs kick off under new bosses.
But none of those situations is Liverpool.
Something here still doesn't add up. Twelve months ago, Arne Slot won the title in his debut season. Twelve months later, he was gone. His second campaign, as Al Jazeera put it, "transformed from a title defence into a desperate scramble for Champions League qualification," and Liverpool only grabbed that fifth Champions League place on the final day. Along the way, Slot's team lost nine of twelve games in all competitions and won no domestic cup. You don't fall that far, that fast, at a club that size without leaving a crater behind. Iraola is being asked to stand in it.
That's the trap. Everywhere else, a new manager can sell "transition." Maresca can point to the Guardiola era ending. Carrick can point to a rebuild. Iraola has no such cover, because Liverpool were champions the season before last. The bar isn't "get better." It's "why aren't you where you were two years ago?" That's the cruelest kind of pressure: expectation with no honeymoon attached.
And Liverpool aren't hiding it. The club is targeting a more attack-minded, aggressive style after Slot's football was widely criticized as too pedestrian. Iraola, the former Bournemouth manager, has promised a proud, aggressive Liverpool. Good, that's the right identity. But it also means he's been hired to fix a named problem on a stage where patience is a rumor. He's said it himself: "I feel like I have a lot of things to prove."
He's right to feel that. Iraola is a genuinely good coach, and the aggressive brief suits him. But he's inheriting a squad that just collapsed and a fanbase that tasted a title only to watch it curdle into a fifth-place finish. The boardroom already pulled the trigger on the man who delivered the trophy. If they'll sack the guy who won it in year one, what's the safety net for the guy brought in to clean up year two?
There isn't one. Everyone else got a fresh start. Iraola got a reckoning. Buckle up.
