Just how much stock should be placed in pre-season form depends entirely on who is asked.
Supporters starved of football through the summer months are desperate to see fresh faces in action and to sense the early stirrings of momentum before the new campaign begins.
At Anfield, however, that build-up has stalled in dramatic fashion, both in results and behind the scenes.
There is no fixed rule for how much weight pre-season outcomes should carry. Consider last summer, when Arsenal lost to Thomas Frank's Tottenham in Hong Kong and were beaten at home by Villarreal in their second-to-last warm-up game.
Nine months later, Frank had lost his job while Arsenal lifted the Premier League title and came within a penalty shoot-out of Champions League glory.
By that measure, Liverpool's own pair of two-goal collapses could be dismissed as meaningless. According to Football365, the Reds' 2026 pre-season log now reads W-W-L-L, having beaten Sunderland 4-2 and Wrexham 1-0 before losing 4-2 to Leeds and then falling 3-2 to Monaco.
There are positives buried within those results for Andoni Iraola. Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak, both of whom struggled through difficult debut campaigns on Merseyside, have looked sharp throughout the summer, and both were on target in the defeat to Monaco.
Yet a broader unease is building, one significant enough that the new head coach felt compelled to address it publicly with fewer than two weeks remaining before the Premier League opener against Newcastle, live on Sky Sports on 23 August.
Fitness concerns laid bare
What those two defeats have exposed most starkly is a growing worry over conditioning.
No team in the Premier League produced more sprints last season than Iraola's Bournemouth side, and his demand for relentless, physically punishing pressing football is well documented.
Those demands may be felt even more acutely by a Liverpool squad that ranked third-fewest for total pressures and second-fewest for high pressures applied in the opposition half last season.
Liverpool are no strangers to pressing football, of course, having spent years playing that way under Jurgen Klopp, with several of his former players still on the books. But undoing Arne Slot's more measured approach and rebuilding both the mentality and the physical conditioning required is proving to be a lengthy process, one that time is quickly running out on.
Speaking after the Monaco defeat, Iraola made a blunt admission about his squad's current limitations.
"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.
That comment spoke as much to game time as to fitness itself. Elsewhere, Liverpool's rivals are clearly favouring continuity over rotation. Manchester City, Arsenal and Aston Villa - all fellow Champions League participants - each fielded five or more outfield players for at least 75 minutes in their weekend friendlies. Liverpool, by contrast, managed to keep only three players on the pitch for even 60 minutes.
Even Newcastle, Liverpool's opening-day opponents, gave six players at least 67 minutes against Valencia on Saturday, despite having to make an enforced substitution when Jacob Murphy went off injured in the first half.
Most of Sunday's Liverpool starting XI could realistically line up at St James' Park for the season opener, and it was that group who raced into a 2-0 lead against Monaco, offering glimpses of the identity Iraola is trying to instil.
Depth issues compound the problem
With Liverpool still playing catch-up on fitness compared to their rivals, squad depth becomes an even more pressing issue - and it's here that further complications emerge for the head coach.
Chelsea were able to call upon Nicolas Jackson, Geovany Quenda and Estevao from the bench in their 3-0 win over AC Milan on Saturday. A day later, Liverpool were forced to field a makeshift centre-back pairing of Wataru Endo and Luke Chambers - who spent last season on loan at Charlton - for the majority of the second half against Monaco.
Aside from Victor Munoz and Milos Kerkez, both likely to start against Newcastle, Liverpool's eight second-half substitutes against Monaco had combined for just eight top-flight starts last season, five of which belonged solely to 17-year-old Rio Ngumoha.
Iraola has been open about the thinness of his squad, calling for reinforcements within weeks of taking charge, but that appeal has yet to bring the results he was hoping for.
He would no doubt have preferred to avoid the departure of Michael Edwards last month, along with the ongoing speculation surrounding Richard Hughes' future at the club, though that will offer little in the way of an excuse should Liverpool make a sluggish start to the campaign.
The unexpected signing of Ronald Araujo eases the situation somewhat, but even with him added to the ranks, Liverpool still have only two fit senior centre-backs available. Conor Bradley, according to Iraola, remains "months" away from returning to action. It is at least some relief that Kostas Tsimikas and Milos Kerkez are both currently fit and available.
Further up the pitch, Liverpool need more than just Victor Munoz to fill the void left by Mo Salah, while Cody Gakpo has attracted interest from Tottenham and Curtis Jones was left out entirely for Sunday's match, with Inter Milan still hopeful of landing the England midfielder.
Having spent well in excess of £400m last summer - a huge outlay even before accounting for departures - it is fair to expect that Liverpool should not still be short-handed in multiple areas of the pitch.
Not every issue is of the club's own making. The problems at centre-back in particular stem more from an unfortunate run of injuries to Jeremy Jacquet, Giovanni Leoni and now Joe Gomez than from any failure in planning. Jacquet, notably, was left out of the pre-season squad entirely as the club carefully manages his recovery from a shoulder injury, as detailed in our earlier coverage of his situation.
With only Alexis Mac Allister still to return from World Cup commitments, pre-season is, if nothing else, proving useful in highlighting where Iraola's squad is lacking. Those gaps are most visible in wide-forward positions and in midfield, and time to address them is running short - particularly if further departures follow.
Behind the scenes at Anfield
Liverpool's players have already been feeling the weight of Iraola's demanding methods, with Milos Kerkez previously detailing the intensity, discipline and attention to detail behind the new manager's approach, as covered in our report on Iraola's gruelling pre-season sessions.
There has been some encouraging news on the personnel front too. Iraola has confirmed that Victor Munoz, Alisson Becker and Alexis Mac Allister will all rejoin the group, while former Reds midfielder Vladimir Smicer has publicly urged the club to pursue a move for Bournemouth's Alex Scott, according to our coverage of the squad boost and transfer talk.
Elsewhere in the transfer market, Iraola has outlined his plans following two new signings at the start of pre-season, confirmed Pablo de la Torre as his No. 2, and received a fresh update on the club's pursuit of Maghnes Akliouche, as detailed in our piece on the Akliouche pursuit taking shape.
The Guardian, meanwhile, reported that Liverpool's three-match tour of the United States - taking in Nashville, New York City and Chicago - exposed clear gaps in the squad before the team returned home ahead of the Monaco friendly.
What happens next
Liverpool's final public pre-season fixture comes on 16 August, when they host Como at Anfield, according to the BBC. The club has also arranged an additional behind-closed-doors match against the Italian side on the same day, which explains why two separate Como fixtures appear on the schedule, as noted by Sports Illustrated.
Liverpool's Premier League campaign then gets under way away at Newcastle United on 23 August 2026, as confirmed by Yahoo Sports.
Few expect Slot's debut-season heroics to be repeated, or the Premier League trophy to find its way back to Anfield by the end of next May.
But precisely how far off the pace Liverpool prove to be, and how effectively Iraola can embed his methods, will hinge heavily on what happens - both in and out - during the three weeks of transfer business still remaining.
