What to expect from Andoni Iraola's first Liverpool pre-season as brutal plans take shape

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What to expect during the first pre-season sessions under Andoni Iraola later this monthThe day the Liverpool squad dread more than any other is nearing, with the first pre-season session now less than a fortnight away.Andoni Iraola will be the face to greet the players at the AXA Training Centre on July 13 as the squad get set for a new era and a fresh direction after two years under Arne Slot.Slot considerably changed the pre-season setup during his time in charge compared to what was traditionally undertaken when Jurgen Klopp was in place.The iconic German coach had eight summers at the helm, meaning some of his infamous drills became the stuff of nightmares, particularly under famed taskmaster Andreas Kornmayer, the former head of conditioning.Pre-season schedules are, by their nature, designed to be intense and the idea is that the hard yards of the summer will pay off when the going gets tough later on in the season itself.Liverpool, under Klopp, liked to push their players to the maximum to allow them to implement their famously pressing style on the pitch.First-team typically stars undergo a series of tests when reporting back after summer, including blood, body fat, concussion, balance and heart scans before being put to work.Under Klopp, Liverpool also had the lactate test, which was a brutal exercise which tested the players’ aerobic endurance and measured their lactic acid levels.Players were instructed to run around one of the Kirkby pitches and at a series of intervals, blood tests would be taken to test for levels of lactic acid. If a player was above a certain amount, they would then drop out.The now retired James Milner was typically the victor during his time at Anfield before Mohamed Salah came out on top in 2023 following the vice-captain's departure.Andy Robertson's first memories as a Liverpool player are shaped - and in fact scarred - by his experience of the lactate acid test in the summer of 2017, shortly after he signed from Hull City.Speaking in an interview with Open Goal in 2018, the left-back detailed how the examination caused him to be sick on the first day of his Liverpool career as he struggled to keep pace.“It’s horrible, running round the pitch, I’m doing it with Danny Ings and that," said Robertson.

I was fit, because I had three weeks at Hull and I was looking after myself.“So I’m taking the lactate test and I’m thinking, ‘my stomach’s a bit dodgy here’. I started gagging and I was sick everywhere."Halfway around I had to stop and be sick, then I tried to catch them up because I’m thinking, ‘I can’t drop out at this point’, because this point was like you are super unfit, that was the point you had to get by.“So I was sick around the pitch, then I had to stop because they have to take the blood out your ear, and I was sick when I was getting my blood taken.

I went another lap and I was like ‘I need to stop.'"It even earned the Scotland an unwanted nickname from Klopp in his fledgling days as a Reds player, with Robertson later adding: "Luckily the gaffer wasn’t there and I thought I’d got away with it and he returned three days later and introduced himself, blah blah blah, and then he called me 'Mr. I was gutted!"Under Slot, Liverpool changed from the aforementioned lactate test to a Six-Minute Race Test (6MRT).