It was a happy first outing as Liverpool boss for Andoni Iraola as the Reds secured a 4-2 win against Sunderland in Nashville.
Goals from Kieran Morrison, Federico Chiesa, Dominik Szoboszlai and Lewis Koumas gave the Spaniard a deserved win.
Iraola was animated on the touchline and his players appeared to be buying into his philosophy, which is great news for the Anfield faithful.
However, Joe Gomez’s injury soured what was an otherwise perfect first outing for the Liverpool boss.
Andoni Iraola confirms Joe Gomez injury blow
With Giovanni Leoni still recovering from his ACL injury and Jeremy Jacquet being eased into the fray, Gomez led the backline for Liverpool and also captained the team.
However, his night ended after just seven minutes as he was withdrawn for Ifeanyi Ndukwe, who made his club debut.
Liverpool are already short of options at the back, so Gomez’s injury blow is a cruel one for Iraola to deal with.
And that was exactly the Spaniard’s emotion after the game as he rued the Englishman’s premature substitution.
“I think it was different halves. Especially, they were a lot stronger in the first half. We kind of balanced both teams, and you could feel the difference.
“A lot of things to correct, obviously; it’s the first day. You could feel the heavy legs; the players have been training. So, we lacked some freshness. But it will give us a good starting point to improve things.”
“Probably the worst news has been straight away the injury of Joe [Gomez]. We were happy because we were kind of going through all the training without losing any player. Unluckily for us, straight away we’ve lost Joe.”
We have to wait to hear more about Gomez’s injury, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be anything serious.
Nevertheless, the Reds are wafer-thin at the back, so they need to err on the side of caution with the Englishman and their other defensive options.
