Andoni Iraola finally has his Liverpool backroom team in place after the Reds announced four arrivals this week.
As expected, Tommy Elphick, Shaun Cooper, Tom Webber and Pablo de la Torre have now been confirmed as Iraola’s right-hand men, following the Basque up North from Bournemouth.
Liverpool did not waste any time in delivering profiles for the quartet on their official website, and, in a somewhat surprise move, former Cherries’ conditioning coach De la Torre appears to have been given a promotion.
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Pablo de la Torre named as Liverpool assistant
De la Torre is the only new member of the Liverpool coaching staff to have been with Iraola before his Bournemouth days, with the Spaniard now taking in five different clubs with his boss.
While he has been listed as a conditioning coach, an important role given the high-intensity football Iraola’s teams play, at all of the previous four, he has seemingly been handed different responsibilities ahead of the move to Anfield.
According to Liverpoolfc.com, De la Torre will be an ‘assistant coach’ to Iraola at Liverpool.
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This appears to be one rung above both Elphick and Cooper, who are listed as merely ‘first-team coaches.’ Webber, meanwhile, has joined as a ‘first-team tactical analyst’.
Though it remains to be seen exactly how this plays out in practice, it is initially a surprise to see De la Torre take on a more central coaching role.
There have been rumours that a former Liverpool player could arrive onto Iraola’s coaching team, and perhaps they could act as another assistant, in the same manner Arne Slot had Sipke Hulshoff and John Heitinga, before latterly swapping Heitinga for Giovanni van Bronckhorst.
In the meantime, Elphick, Cooper, Webber and De la Torre will be working hard behind the scenes to prepare for the return of the first-team in the next three weeks. We may get more clues once training eventually begins.
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