One Premier League title. One fifth-place finish. One sacking. Liverpool have parted ways with Arne Slot, and the club are now reported to be pursuing Andoni Iraola as his replacement — a move that would bring one of the most tactically compelling managers in English football to Anfield.
Slot arrived at Anfield in the summer of 2024 carrying the weight of following Jürgen Klopp — and in his first season, he delivered the one thing that makes any Liverpool manager untouchable: the league title. That should have bought time. It didn't.
A fifth-place finish in his second season changed the calculation entirely. According to BBC Sport and Sky Sports, Liverpool have now terminated Slot's contract, with the club deciding that the drop-off in league performance was too sharp to ignore. The precise internal reasoning has not been made public beyond the results themselves — but in football, fifth place after a title tends to speak for itself.
Slot leaves with a Premier League winners' medal in his cabinet and a question mark hanging over what went wrong so quickly. He did not get a third season to answer it.
Multiple outlets — BBC Sport, Sky Sports and ESPN — report that Andoni Iraola is the frontrunner to take the job. Nothing is confirmed. No deal has been announced. But the volume of sources pointing in the same direction gives this real weight.
Iraola has spent two seasons at Bournemouth turning a side that looked like Premier League makeweights into a team with a genuine identity — high-intensity pressing, aggressive defensive structure, a clear tactical fingerprint on every game. He is, quietly, one of the most respected coaches in the division.
For Liverpool, the logic is fairly clean. They want a manager who can restore the relentless energy that defined the Klopp years — and Iraola's Bournemouth sides have run further and pressed harder than almost anyone in the league. The profile fits.
Iraola's appointment is not done. Bournemouth would need to sanction his departure, and the manager himself would need to agree terms on what would be the biggest job of his career. Liverpool's hierarchy will be moving quickly — the summer window does not wait, and a club without a manager is a club losing ground in the transfer market with every passing day.
For now, Slot is out. Iraola is the name. Anfield is waiting.
One Premier League title. One fifth-place finish. One sacking. Liverpool have parted ways with Arne Slot, and the club are now reported to be pursuing Andoni Iraola as his replacement
Källor
BBC Sport — Football, Sky Sports — Football, ESPN FC
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