Just how much weight should be put on pre-season form? Opinions differ wildly depending on who you ask.
Supporters starved of football over the summer are desperate to see fresh faces bed in and get a sense of momentum building before a ball is kicked in anger. At Anfield, though, that buzz has stalled sharply, both on the pitch and behind the scenes.
There is no exact science to reading pre-season results. Look back twelve months, when Thomas Frank's Tottenham beat Arsenal in Hong Kong and Villarreal won at the Emirates in the Gunners' second-to-last warm-up game. Within nine months Frank had lost his job, while Arsenal lifted the Premier League title and came within a penalty shoot-out of European glory.
Following that same logic, Liverpool's habit of surrendering two-goal advantages against both Leeds and Monaco could be brushed aside as pre-season noise. There are genuine positives too, with Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak - both of whom had difficult debut campaigns on Merseyside - looking sharper in these friendlies. Both found the net in Sunday's meeting with Monaco.
Still, a wider pattern is forming, and Andoni Iraola has already flagged enough concern publicly with under two weeks to go before Liverpool travel to face Newcastle in the Premier League opener, shown live on Sky Sports on August 23.
Fitness levels under scrutiny
What these back-to-back collapses really expose is one of Liverpool's biggest headaches right now - conditioning.
No Premier League club produced more sprints last season than Iraola's Bournemouth side, and his demand for relentless, high-intensity pressing is well documented.
That style may prove an even bigger adjustment for a Liverpool squad that ranked third-lowest for total pressures and second-lowest for high pressures in the opposition half last term.
Granted, Liverpool are no strangers to pressing football given the Jurgen Klopp era and the number of his old players still in the building. But undoing Arne Slot's more measured approach - mentally and, crucially, physically - is proving a slow process with the season fast approaching.
Iraola was refreshingly blunt after the Monaco game, admitting his squad may currently only be able to sustain his intensity for around half an hour at a stretch.
"We played well in the first half, especially the first 30 minutes, but right now probably we don't have much more in terms of the level required to play like this," he told club channels after the game.
Liverpool players have already been left lying on the floor during Iraola's demanding pre-season sessions, with Milos Kerkez previously detailing just how tough the intensity, discipline and attention to detail have been under the new head coach.
Rivals prioritising cohesion over rotation
The comment also spoke to a wider issue around minutes on the pitch. Liverpool's rivals are increasingly choosing continuity over wholesale changes in pre-season. Manchester City, Arsenal and Aston Villa - all fellow Champions League qualifiers - each kept five or more outfield starters on the pitch for at least 75 minutes in their weekend friendlies. Only three of Liverpool's players managed even 60 minutes.
Even next weekend's opponents Newcastle handed six players at least 67 minutes against Valencia on Saturday, despite having to withdraw Jacob Murphy early through injury.
Most of Liverpool's starting XI against Monaco on Sunday could realistically line up at St James' Park, and it was that group who raced into a 2-0 lead and offered glimpses of the identity Iraola wants to build.
Depth becomes a growing worry
With Liverpool trailing rivals on conditioning, squad depth matters more than ever - and here further problems are stacking up.
Chelsea's bench strength let them bring on Nicolas Jackson, Geovany Quenda and Estevao to beat AC Milan 3-0 on Saturday. A day later, Liverpool were relying on Wataru Endo and Luke Chambers - who spent last season on loan at Charlton - as a makeshift centre-back pairing for most of the second half against Monaco.
Outside of Victor Munoz and Milos Kerkez, both likely to start against Newcastle, Liverpool's eight second-half substitutes against Monaco had made just eight top-flight starts between them last season - five of those belonging to 17-year-old Rio Ngumoha alone.
Iraola has been open about his thin squad, publicly pushing the club for reinforcements within weeks of taking charge, yet that call hasn't yet produced the response he'd hoped for.
He would certainly have preferred to avoid losing Michael Edwards last month, and the continued uncertainty surrounding Richard Hughes' future won't be an acceptable excuse should the season start slowly.
The unexpected capture of Ronald Araujo helps, but even with him in the squad Liverpool still have just two fit senior centre-backs available. Iraola has confirmed Conor Bradley remains "months" away from a return. At least Kostas Tsimikas and Milos Kerkez are both currently fit at full-back.
Summer signing Jeremy Jacquet has also been missing from the pre-season squad as the club carefully manage his recovery from a shoulder injury, compounding the defensive shortage alongside the injuries to Giovanni Leoni and Joe Gomez.
Further forward, Victor Munoz alone looks unlikely to be sufficient cover for the loss of Mo Salah, while Cody Gakpo is attracting interest from Tottenham and Curtis Jones was left out entirely against Monaco with Inter Milan still hopeful of landing the England midfielder.
After spending well over £400m last summer - a huge outlay even before factoring in departures - it's fair to expect Liverpool shouldn't still be short in multiple positions. Not all of it is self-inflicted, of course; the centre-back crisis owes more to a cruel run of injuries than poor planning.
Reinforcements and returns
Iraola has confirmed that Victor Munoz, Alisson Becker and Alexis Mac Allister will all rejoin the squad, while Vladimir Smicer has also pushed for a move for Bournemouth's Alex Scott to bolster midfield options. Separately, the club received a fresh update on their interest in Maghnes Akliouche as part of Iraola's broader recruitment plans heading into the new campaign.
With Alexis Mac Allister the only player still due back from World Cup duty, pre-season is at least serving one clear purpose - highlighting exactly where the squad's gaps lie. Those look most glaring out wide and in central midfield, and the clock is ticking to fix them, especially if more players leave before the window shuts.
The full pre-season picture
According to the Premier League's official pre-season fixture list, Liverpool's Monaco defeat was not an isolated blip but part of a run that has yielded two wins and two defeats: a 4-2 win over Sunderland, a 1-0 win against Wrexham, a 2-4 loss to Leeds, and the 2-3 defeat to Monaco.
The Leeds defeat came during Liverpool's United States tour, and according to The Athletic, the squad only returned home on the Monday morning following that game, before facing Monaco at Anfield - a schedule that offered little recovery time. The same report described the tour as ending with "causes for concern" after Liverpool blew a two-goal lead against Leeds at Soldier Field.
That US trip - to Nashville, New York City and Chicago against Sunderland, Wrexham and Leeds United respectively - had been confirmed back in March, according to Wikipedia's record of Liverpool's 2026-27 season, with the additional home friendlies against Monaco and Como announced later, on 2 June 2026, to round off the club's preparations.
What happens next
Liverpool's pre-season schedule isn't quite finished. Per the Premier League, the club face Como at Anfield on 16 August, with Sports Illustrated reporting that the fixture is actually split into two matches on the same day - one played behind closed doors and one open to supporters. The BBC's pre-season roundup similarly noted that Liverpool would "conclude their pre-season with two fixtures at Anfield" against Monaco and Como 1907.
After that, the real business begins. Liverpool's first competitive fixture of the season arrives on 23 August 2026, away at Newcastle United, as confirmed by Yahoo Sports.
Few expect Liverpool to replicate Slot's title-winning debut campaign, and the Premier League trophy is unlikely to be heading back to Anfield come next May. But precisely how far off the pace Liverpool find themselves, and how quickly Iraola can stamp his style on the squad, will depend heavily on what business the club conducts in the three weeks of the transfer window that remain.
