Salah and Robertson are gone. Sunday showed exactly what that costs early on

A draw Iraola admitted his side didn’t deserve

Andoni Iraola’s first competitive match in charge of Liverpool ended in a 2-2 draw at Newcastle that summed up the transition his squad is going through better than any pre-season friendly could. Liverpool twice fell behind, first to Anthony Elanga in the first half and then to substitute Joe Willock, before Dominik Szoboszlai converted a stoppage-time penalty in the 99th minute to salvage a point that Iraola himself admitted his side probably didn’t deserve.

The penalty that decided it

The penalty award became the story of the weekend on its own terms. ESPN’s VAR review judged referee Stuart Attwell’s call correct, noting defender Lewis Hall was “naive to make his clumsy challenge” as Victor Munoz ran into the box at pace, while Newcastle boss Matthias Jaissle called it “a really soft one” that he felt shouldn’t have been given. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, it meant a Liverpool side missing Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson for the first time in an opening fixture in years still found a way not to lose.

Iraola on a rocky start

“It’s a strange feeling,” Iraola said afterwards. “It’s not the result you wanted coming here but the way it ended, it tastes better. Still, we prefer to win.” He was candid about the start his side made too: “We probably started the worst way. We knew Newcastle was at home with their atmosphere. Newcastle have very fast players in the top line, in transition. They punished us and we had to go against the result.” It’s not the kind of debut he’ll have wanted, but the response, chasing the game twice against a fired-up home crowd, was at least evidence the group hasn’t stopped competing under new management.

The squad’s unfinished business

Some of the squad’s unfinished business was visible in real time too. Jeremy Jacquet, signed from Rennes but still working back from a shoulder issue, “hasn’t done a proper preseason in terms of minutes,” Iraola said, and it showed in a Liverpool XI missing the kind of settled partnerships that carried last season’s title win. Munoz, one of the summer’s lower-profile arrivals, was directly involved in the winning moment regardless, drawing the foul from Hall that turned a damaging opening-day defeat into a draw that “tastes better” than it should.

Liverpool’s title price drifts

That transition is reflected in the market too. Liverpool’s title price drifted out to 7/1 after matchweek one, from 13/2 before the season began, following a draw at a ground where they’d previously gone 19 league games unbeaten, and Gambling.com, which also profiles brand new UK casino sites alongside its sportsbook content, is the kind of place fans have been checking to see exactly how far that price has moved now the scale of the summer rebuild has been tested competitively rather than just discussed in pre-season previews.

Wirtz, Isak and the bench that rescued the point

Not every part of the squad overhaul looked shaky. Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak, the closest thing this Liverpool side has to an established partnership after arriving together last summer for a combined £225m, showed flashes of understanding even as the team around them struggled to settle, and Liverpool.com’s coverage of the game noted Iraola’s bench, Koumas, Munoz and Alexis Mac Allister among them, provided the energy that turned the game around late on.

A first test of the rebuild

Nineteen straight unbeaten league visits to Newcastle is now a run that’s ended, but Liverpool leave St James’ Park with a point rather than the damaging defeat that looked likely for most of the afternoon, and a first look at what this rebuilt squad is capable of when it’s actually under pressure. Ronald Araujo’s loan move from Barcelona is still bedding in defensively, one more reminder that a squad rebuilt this heavily over one summer needs matches, not just training-ground sessions, to find its settled shape. For the fuller build-up on team news and how Iraola set up against Newcastle specifically, our full match preview has more on the expected XI and the tactical questions that Sunday’s draw only partly answered.

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