Andoni Iraola believes Liverpool have given themselves a “good starting point to improve things” after opening their pre-season tour of the United States with a 4-2 victory over Sunderland.
The Reds played their first match of the tour at GEODIS Park in Nashville on Saturday as preparations for the 2026-27 campaign gathered pace.
Kieran Morrison opened the scoring after 12 minutes, calmly finishing across goal to give Liverpool an early lead.
Sunderland responded quickly through Enzo Le Fee, whose long-range strike restored parity, before Timur Tutierov put the Black Cats ahead shortly after the break.
Liverpool dominated the second half and deservedly equalised in the 56th minute when Dominik Szoboszlai reacted quickest to a loose ball on the edge of the area and fired a crisp finish into the near corner.
Federico Chiesa then completed the turnaround with a composed finish from a tight angle inside the box before Lewis Koumas wrapped up the win with a well-taken strike to seal a 4-2 victory.
Reflecting on the performance, Andoni Iraola said: “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.
“It was difficult to put rhythm into the game. I think both teams were lacking some freshness and it was also humid. The pitch was quite slow. We had some good spells on the ball.
“I think we lacked a little bit of intensity. You can feel the timing is still not there. We have to work a lot more but it’s a starting point.
Iraola added: “It was a matter of using the game to push ourselves and to go back to the rhythm that we should have. You play 45, 60 [or] whatever the minutes you play, use them properly.
“It doesn’t matter the result but keep pushing, don’t relax, get used to not playing too comfortable. We still have a lot of things to improve.”
On the players returning for pre-season in the coming days, the 44-year-old said: They are already there in Chicago. They are waiting for us. Alex [Isak], Flo [Wirtz] and Ryan [Gravenberch].
“They will start training from tomorrow with us and we still have two more games [in the USA]. I hope we use them properly and we go [forward] improving slowly, slowly the things that today didn’t work.”
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