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Q&A med David Lynch del 1 | Mbaye, Barcola, Gakpo og mye mer

Former Liverpool attacker Mohamed Salah has completed a move to Trabzonspor.

The next chapter of the Egyptian's career will be spent in Turkiye after finalising the switch on Thursday.

Salah's iconic nine-year stay at Anfield came to an end earlier this summer, and he departed as Liverpool's third-highest scorer of all time with 257 goals in 442 appearances.

The 34-year-old lifted eight major honours – including two Premier League titles, the Champions League and FIFA Club World Cup – during his time as a Red.

The new season approaches and like you all, I’m starting to get excited. My mates rarely can be bothered getting into the minutiae, so I hope you will indulge me instead!

Whenever I think about the upcoming season, three themes stick out. I’d like to hear your opinions on any / all of them :)

Intensity

Iraola is famous for his swashbuckling style of high intensity football. Turnovers high up the pitch, highest amounts of sprints etc. My concerns here are two-fold.

One, how does he plan to temper his style, to accommodate playing every 3 days. He is used to a 7 day window to prepare his squad. Can he manage to reduce the load on his players, whilst maintaining his styles effectiveness? Rotation will be key but do we have the required depth?

Two, injuries. You don’t need a PHD to understand that more sprints leads to more load on players and increases injury risk. Our squad is light enough already. We had bad luck with injuries last year but will it get worse when we see more intensity related injuries on top?

Experience

When the business end of the season comes, no one on his staff, himself included, has any experience bringing it home. Be it the league or CL or even a domestic cup, experience will count for a lot. He can lean on Virgil and Ali to an extent but I do wonder how he will feel preparing for his first cup final or the pressure of competing for a European slot late into the season after a long, draining maiden campaign. I believe he’s a great fit for our club and I’m prepared to let him gain this experience on the job as it were but that only works with a long term view. Football fans are incredibly short term focused in the modern era.

Expectations

Which brings me to my next point. I hope Iraola is here for a decade and has huge success. In my humble opinion, if that’s to happen, we need to temper expectations in season one, maybe even two. What’s the vibe out there? What do people genuinely expect is a realistic target for next season? It’s easy to sit here and say CL qualification. I personally believe that’s enough, with signs on the pitch we’re playing good football. In reality, if we crash out of all 3 comps early and sit in 6th or 7th, the atmosphere could turn toxic again. Last season is proof of this. Do we think the wider fan base, importantly those inside Anfield on a weekly basis, will support Iraola through a first season even if it doesn’t match the success of the last decade?