Andoni Iraola has been handed a welcome boost to his Liverpool squad ahead of the second fixture of their pre-season tour of the United States.
The Reds’ first friendly in America ended with a 4-2 victory over Sunderland on Saturday, although the result was tempered by an early injury to Joe Gomez, which left the head coach with no senior centre-backs to call upon.
However, the Basque will have three more players available to him for the next fixture against Wrexham in New York on Wednesday night (Thursday morning BST).
Iraola told reporters after the weekend win that Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz and Ryan Gravenberch have all arrived at Liverpool’s training base in Chicago (liverpoolfc.com), with the trio having enjoyed some time off after their involvement at the World Cup.
On Sunday, the official LFC website shared images from the squad’s latest training session which show the Sweden, Germany and Netherlands internationals being put through their paces upon linking up with their club.
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The first batch of players returning after the World Cup feels like another notable step towards the beginning of the season, with a few more to follow in the weeks ahead (Alisson Becker is the next man in line to join up with the Liverpool squad).
The fluid nature of substitutions in pre-season games means that Gravenberch, Wirtz and Isak will most likely play a portion of the match against Wrexham in midweek (45 minutes each might be the plan) as Iraola seeks to get a look at as many players as possible.
All three know that they’ll be central to the head coach’s plans for the upcoming campaign, but this week is about each of them becoming acclimatised to how the Basque works in terms of training and in-game tactics.
For Wirtz and Isak in particular, they’ll be determined to answer their critics from last season, with neither quite hitting the heights expected from them after their £100m+ transfers to Liverpool last summer.
Although none of the returning trio solve the Reds’ glaring centre-back issues, Iraola will be quite glad to have them with the squad and begin working with three players who are likely to be fixed presences in his strongest starting XI for the coming season.
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