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There’s not many better placed to offer their opinion on Liverpool and their decision to hire Iraola, and Gerrard’s keen to see the ex-Bournemouth boss given the requisite time to build a title-winning squad at Anfield. He said: “I want to get behind him (Iraola) and give him a chance. I think he deserved the opportunity to be Liverpool manager, first and foremost. <\/span><\/p>\n “I thought he was outstanding at Bournemouth. What he did with that team and his philosophy and style of play, the results he got, the brand of football. He earned the opportunity to be Liverpool manager. It’s a big step up, with all due respect, bigger pressure, bigger responsibilities to deliver silverware. <\/span><\/p>\n “I think he’s got a lot of talent in his squad but I still think he needs time and patience to shape that squad, to turn them into winners again. I’m really excited, I’m optimistic, got a lot of hope. We’ve got talented players, if the manager can mould that into a title-winning team… He’s got a lot of ingredients there to work with.”<\/span><\/p>\n Manchester City and Tottenham were both keen on signing Gakpo from Liverpool in the summer, with the Dutchman ultimately staying put as the transfer window closed. Gerrard thinks it was vital that the former PSV forward remained on Merseyside, especially given the nightmare Achilles injury suffered by Hugo Ekitike during the second half of last season.<\/span><\/p>\n Gerrard said: “On the back of last season and the injury to Ekitike, we only really had one No.9 in [Alexander] Isak. It was critical that we kept hold of Gakpo. I think he’s had a decent World Cup and pre-season, he’s started the season on fire. He’s got a small niggle at the moment but hopefully that’s not too bad because we’re going to need him. <\/span><\/p>\n “He’s an important part of the squad and hopefully he can keep delivering because if he can bring that consistency over the course of a season, I’m really looking forward to watching him.”<\/span><\/p>\n For all the above and much more, click the play button at the top of the page to watch the full episode \u2b06\ufe0f<\/span><\/p>\n The Beast Mode On Podcast is available via\u00a0<\/span>YouTube<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>Spotify<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n There’s not many better placed to offer their opinion on Liverpool and their decision to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"two_page_speed":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/261012_THUMBNAIL_BMO_STEVEN-GERRARD_V1_.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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