Liverpool's Managerial Gamble: Alonso's Missed Opportunity
Liverpool did not just sack a manager at the weekend. They detonated a debate that will rumble all summer.
Arne Slot is out after two seasons, dismissed despite delivering a Premier League title in his first year. A fifth-place finish in his second proved too much for Fenway Sports Group, who moved ruthlessly once the campaign ended.
The decision itself is brutal but understandable. The timing is what has Anfield bristling.
Alonso Question Haunts FSG
Earlier this year, Xabi Alonso was there. Available. Waiting for his next move after leaving Real Madrid in January. A club icon with modern coaching pedigree, heavily linked with a romantic return to Merseyside.
Liverpool paused. Chelsea did not.
Alonso agreed to take the job at Stamford Bridge last month, and Liverpool stayed loyal to Slot. Only now, weeks later, they have pulled the trigger and are closing in on Andoni Iraola instead. It is that sequence – stick with Slot when Alonso is free, then sack Slot when Alonso is gone – that has left supporters and former players staring at the hierarchy and asking the same question: why?
On The Overlap, Jamie Carragher did not bother to hide his frustration. For him, the issue is not just that Slot has gone, but that the club never truly moved for Alonso when they still could.
Carragher could not understand why sporting director Richard Hughes did not make Alonso the priority the moment doubts surfaced over Slot’s future. To him, Alonso was the obvious candidate: a world-class playing résumé, shaped by elite managers, and a track record at the top level that fits the scale of Liverpool’s ambitions.
“I would have changed him (Slot) for Xabi Alonso,” Carragher said. “As soon as he went to Chelsea, I was thinking that I would keep Slot.”
That line captures the confusion. If the club were prepared to back Slot once Alonso had gone, what changed so dramatically in a matter of weeks?
Carragher pointed to Alonso’s work with Florian Wirtz at Bayer Leverkusen, his exposure to pressure at Real Madrid, and the scrutiny he has already learned to live with. For a club that thrives on intensity and expectation, he felt Alonso’s profile almost picked itself.
“If you were going to change it, why was it not for Alonso?” he asked, laying bare the logic gap many fans see.
Iraola Fit Under The Microscope
Now attention turns to Iraola, heavily tipped to take over. On paper, he brings energy and modernity: a coach defined by a ferocious, high-pressing game, demanding, aggressive, and tactically bold.
That is exactly what worries Carragher.
Beyond Alonso’s missed opportunity, he questioned how Iraola’s approach meshes with the current Liverpool squad. This is not a group built from scratch for his style. It is a team constructed under different managers, for variations of pressing and possession but not necessarily for the extreme physical demands Iraola’s system can impose.
“If Liverpool chose Iraola over Alonso, it is very worrying for Liverpool,” Carragher warned. He accepted that stylistic preferences matter – if the club disliked Alonso’s ideas, or his tendency to use a back three, that is a football decision. But he doubts whether Liverpool’s existing players are suited to Iraola’s relentless press without serious, and expensive, surgery.
“I am not sure Liverpool has the players to play Iraola’s high-pressing game,” he added, cutting to the heart of the tactical concern.
A Summer of Upheaval
Slot’s exit is only the first crack in what is shaping up to be a seismic summer at Anfield.
Mohamed Salah has gone, taking with him goals, aura and a decade of reliability from the right wing. Whoever comes in will not just be replacing a forward; they will be stepping into the void left by one of the club’s modern greats.
The upheaval does not stop on the pitch. Slot’s departure drags away his inner circle too: assistants Sipke Hulshoff, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Ruben Peeters are all leaving. The training ground, once a stable ecosystem, suddenly looks stripped back, waiting for a new regime to rebuild its rhythms and relationships from the ground up.
That is the scale of the job Iraola, or any incoming coach, will walk into. New staff. New structure. New star winger. And a fanbase already questioning the wisdom of the men making the decisions above him.
Iraola has shown he can navigate turbulence. At Bournemouth, he handled the loss of key players and still found a way to refresh and drive his team forward. He rebuilt, re-energised and survived.
Anfield, though, is not Bournemouth. The lights are harsher, the noise louder, the margin for error far smaller. Liverpool are not asking for consolidation; they are demanding a reset that keeps them in the title conversation immediately.
FSG have chosen their moment to act. They have not convinced everyone they chose the right one.
