Liverpool's Managerial Gamble: Carragher's Call for Alonso

Liverpool didn’t just sack a manager. They detonated a plan.

Arne Slot, a Premier League title winner in his first season at Anfield, was dismissed after a fifth-place finish in his second campaign. On paper, it’s ruthless. In timing, it’s baffling.

Alonso missed, questions mount

Xabi Alonso walked out of Real Madrid in January and, for a few weeks, the romantic script wrote itself. Former midfield general returns to Anfield, armed with a glittering playing career, a burgeoning coaching reputation, and the calm authority that once defined Liverpool’s best European nights.

Instead, he chose Chelsea last month.

Liverpool stuck with Slot during that crucial window, backed him through the end of the season, then pulled the plug just weeks after Alonso committed to Stamford Bridge. It’s that sequence that has left the fanbase and former players staring at Fenway Sports Group and sporting director Richard Hughes, wondering how the club let their preferred candidate slip away.

Now, with Andoni Iraola heavily tipped to take over, the scrutiny has sharpened.

Carragher: ‘Why not Alonso?’

On The Overlap, Jamie Carragher didn’t bother with diplomacy. He went straight for the decision-makers.

He could not understand why Hughes and the hierarchy didn’t move decisively for Alonso if there was even a flicker of doubt about Slot’s long-term future.

"I would have changed him (Slot) for Xabi Alonso. As soon as he went to Chelsea, I was thinking that I would keep Slot," Carragher said, laying bare the contradiction at the heart of Liverpool’s strategy.

His case for Alonso was straightforward: elite playing CV, schooled by some of the game’s greatest managers, and already proven in high-pressure environments.

"When I was thinking about Alonso, it was also because he got the best out of Florian Wirtz. If you were going to change it, why was it not for Alonso? With Alonso, you have an incredible playing CV, the managers he has been coached by. What he did at Leverkusen. He has managed Real Madrid. I know it didn't go well, but he is used to that pressure and scrutiny."

That last line matters. Liverpool is not a development project in a quiet corner of Europe. It is a club that eats managers who misread the temperature. Alonso, in Carragher’s eyes, knew that heat already.

Style clash fears with Iraola

The debate is not just about names and nostalgia. It’s about fit.

Carragher’s second major concern centres on Iraola’s football and whether this Liverpool squad is built to execute it. The Basque coach is wedded to an aggressive, high-pressing game that demands relentless running, quick recovery, and absolute synchronicity without the ball.

That’s not a tweak. It’s a full-body transplant.

"If Liverpool chose Iraola over Alonso, it is very worrying for Liverpool," Carragher warned. "If it is because Alonso wants to play a back three, or his style of play, fair enough. But I am not sure Liverpool has the players to play Iraola's high-pressing game."

This is the crux of the unease. The current Liverpool squad has been assembled for different iterations of pressing and possession, not necessarily for Iraola’s most extreme version of it. To play his way, the club may need a major physical and tactical overhaul – and quickly.

A summer of upheaval

Slot’s exit doesn’t just rip out the head coach. It tears through the entire football operation.

Assistants Sipke Hulshoff, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, and Ruben Peeters are all heading out the door with him, stripping the training ground of continuity and familiarity. Any new manager, Iraola or otherwise, walks into a club that needs not just a new idea, but a new staff to deliver it.

On the pitch, the task is just as daunting. Mohamed Salah has gone, and Liverpool must somehow source a world-class replacement on the wing while reshaping the squad to meet a new tactical demand. That’s not a normal summer window. That’s surgery.

Iraola does have one line on his CV that will appeal to Liverpool’s hierarchy. He has handled turbulence before, having rebuilt squads at Bournemouth after losing key players and still kept the team competitive. He has shown he can steady a ship that loses stars.

But Anfield is not Bournemouth. The margin for error is tiny, the expectation suffocating, and every misstep gets replayed across the globe.

Liverpool have chosen upheaval over stability and are about to hand the keys to a coach whose style may not yet match the tools at his disposal.

If this is the new era, it had better arrive fast – because the questions won’t stop until the football provides the answers.