Iraola defends Liverpool's high-press system despite Carragher's midfield concerns after Newcastle draw

Andoni Iraola has defended Liverpool’s aggressive pressing system and rejected calls to rein in his midfield after Sunday’s 2-2 draw at Newcastle left the team exposed on the counter-attack — and drew pointed criticism from club legend Jamie Carragher.

Both goals conceded at St James’ Park stemmed from counter-attacks, with Liverpool’s full-backs and entire midfield caught high upfield. The vulnerability echoes a recurring problem from Arne Slot’s final season in charge, when isolated centre-backs contributed to 52 goals conceded — the club’s highest tally in a 38-game Premier League campaign.

Carragher was unsparing in his assessment on Monday Night Football. “I don’t believe that midfield can function with the personnel in there,” he said of the trio of Ryan Gravenberch, Dominik Szoboszlai and Florian Wirtz. “For me, it doesn’t work. And it’s not just about personnel, it’s the structure the manager is asking.”

Iraola, however, has no intention of pulling back. “You don’t want to lose the offensive side, the fluidity, the arrivals with numbers, but obviously we were punished the other day, especially in the first goal. We didn’t do a proper lockdown,” he said. “We cannot go from one way where we send a lot of people forward to keeping everyone back so we don’t arrive with numbers.”

The Spaniard was equally direct about his expectations of Gravenberch specifically. “I don’t want to tell Ryan Gravenberch, ‘Don’t carry the ball and don’t arrive to the box’. It’s a matter of identifying the situation. You cannot be with the joystick every time controlling the player. There are players that are very good, they’re smelling, ‘OK, there is real danger, I can’t take the risk of going’. Recognising those situations is the job we have to do now.”

The upcoming fixture against Nottingham Forest will be Iraola’s first competitive home game at Anfield since joining from Bournemouth in the summer — a milestone he acknowledged carries genuine weight. “It’s definitely a special moment for me to play your first Premier League game at Anfield. I think it’s going to be emotional and I think it has to be like this. It is a special place. I’ve had to fight a lot to arrive to this place.”

Forest arrive in form, having won their previous two visits to Anfield while keeping clean sheets on both occasions. “We will have to earn every chance. They don’t give you anything for free,” Iraola said. “They defensively are very solid, but they also have very good players up front and good threats on the counter — so we have to control those situations in the transitions.”