Liverpool’s new manager Andoni Iraola is known for his high octane football, but so far the club are struggling to show it.

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Liverpool are just 13 days away from their opening day fixture in the Premier League against Newcastle, and according to their new manager Andoni Iraola, they’re miles off the required level.

The Basque spoke after his team’s 3-2 defeat to Monaco over the weekend, admitting that his ideas were taking a while to implement, and that his group were not physically ready to play his brand of football for a whole game yet.

Liverpool still some way off right level for Iraola

“We played a really good first-half, but right now, we don’t have much more in terms of the level required to play like this [for 90 minutes],” Iraola said in quotes picked up by the Daily Mail.

“Monaco were much better in the second-half in the same way we were better in the first half. They deserved to turn the game around. We won the first two pre-season games, but in the last two we couldn’t sustain the level that we want throughout the game.

“As soon as we made some changes, they started to get tired, so we have work to do. The problem right now is they probably don’t have energy for 90 minutes. It will take time – we’ll do more training with them.

“We can take a lot of positives, but also a lot of negatives from today.”

It could be a tough start to the season for Liverpool as they continue to adapt – the good news for them is that many clubs are going to be in the same situation.