Syndicated reporting provided by Stats Perform and reviewed by the SoccerNews editorial team.
Andoni Iraola described Saturday’s 4-2 friendly win over Sunderland as a “good starting point” for his Liverpool reign but acknowledged an injury suffered by Joe Gomez was a major blow.
Iraola led the Reds for the first time in Nashville, and they kickstarted their three-match tour of the United States with an entertaining victory.
Nineteen-year-old Kieran Morrison put Liverpool ahead with a cultured, left-footed finish, though Enzo Le Fee’s 25-yard piledriver restored parity in the 28th minute.
Tymur Tutierov gave the Black Cats a 2-1 lead early in the second half, but Liverpool came storming back, with Dominik Szoboszlai’s dipping strike from the edge of the area making it 2-2.
Federico Chiesa squeezed a finish inside the near post for 3-2, then Szoboszlai teed up Lewis Koumas to score the Reds’ clinching goal five minutes from time.
Overall, it was a positive outing for Liverpool as they out-shot Sunderland by 14 to 11 and created 1.32 expected goals to their opponents’ 0.72 xG, though they did suffer a blow early on.
Gomez went down and hobbled off with what appeared to be a muscle injury after just eight minutes, causing Liverpool to field teenager Ifeanyi Ndukwe at centre-back, due to Virgil van Dijk getting extra time off following the World Cup and new signing Jeremy Jacquet not yet being fully fit.
“We had some good spells on the ball, but I think we lacked a little bit of intensity,” Iraola told Liverpool’s website afterwards.
“You can feel the timing is still not there. We have to work a lot more, but it’s a starting point.
“I think it was different halves. They were a lot stronger in the first half. We kind of balanced both teams [first- and second-half XIs], and you could feel the difference.
“There are 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.
Starting his tenure with a win pic.twitter.com/SWDq6hh0EZ
— Liverpool FC (@LFC) July 26, 2026
“Probably the worst news came straight away, with the injury to Joe. We were happy because we were getting through all the training without losing any players. Unluckily for us, straight away we’ve lost Joe.”
Iraola was also asked about his reluctance to field Jacquet, who arrived from Rennes in a pre-agreed £60m (€69m) transfer this month, having missed the end of the Ligue 1 season due to a shoulder issue.
“With Jeremy, we decided to take it easy with him. He has gone a lot of months without playing with a shoulder injury,” the former Bournemouth boss said.
“He will play probably the last game of this US tour, and he will have time to get minutes. It’s true that we were kind of happy, but we’ve lost one player now.”
Liverpool’s next pre-season outing sees them face Championship side Wrexham at Yankee Stadium in New York, before they round off their US tour against Leeds United in Chicago.
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