Andoni Iraola's Anfield Journey Begins Against Nottingham Forest

Andoni Iraola has already walked out at Anfield as Liverpool head coach. Pre-season gave him Monaco, Como 1907 and a first taste of his new home. That was the rehearsal. Saturday is the opening night.

Nottingham Forest arrive as the first Premier League visitors of the 2026-27 campaign, the first test of what Iraola keeps calling “our Anfield journey”. The phrase is deliberate. This is not just about a fixture list ticking into life; it is about a relationship being built in real time, between a new coach, a squad still learning his demands and a fanbase that lives every pass as if it were a heartbeat.

He knows exactly what he is walking into.

“I know for our supporters Saturday will be a day that you have looked forward to since the fixtures came out back in June,” he writes in his first home matchday programme. The tone is direct, almost conversational. No grand promises, but no hiding place either.

The first home game of any season carries its own electricity. For a new head coach at a club like Liverpool, it crackles. Iraola admits the friendly run-outs under the Anfield lights were valuable – a chance for players and staff to feel the stadium, to hear its noise, to sense its expectations. But he is clear: the real journey only starts when points are at stake.

He has stood here before as the outsider, and that memory shapes his message now. As an opposition manager he felt the stadium close in, saw how quickly a tackle, a press, a counter-attack can turn noise into a storm. He talks about that openly: he knows as well as anyone “the difference that this stadium can make”.

The responsibility, he insists, lies first with the team.

For Anfield to be Anfield, Liverpool have to give it something to feed on. Energy on the pitch, energy in the stands. One ignites the other. “Feeding off each other can give us such an advantage,” he writes, hoping that this new era at home begins with that old, familiar surge of noise and belief.

That theme runs through everything he says. The passion of Liverpool’s support is not a marketing slogan to him; it is a resource that must be tapped, even demanded. He describes Liverpool as a “special club” and pins that status not on trophies or history alone, but on the people who fill the stadium and live the badge.

For them, he says, football is not something you simply watch. It is something you participate in “with incredible emotion”. His job is to light that emotion with how his team plays – by reflecting the city, the club’s values and the identity that has grown around this ground over generations.

Do that, he believes, and the football will follow. The expectations inside the club are high, and he does not shy away from them. “Our chances of fulfilling our own expectations can only be improved” if the team and supporters move in step. That is the challenge he lays down, not only to his players but to everyone inside Anfield on Saturday.

There is also a realism that underpins the optimism. Iraola has been in the job only since June. The evidence so far is mixed, as early-season evidence usually is. Last weekend at Newcastle, he saw both sides of a team in transition – signs of the work already done, and a clear reminder of the work still to come.

He embraces that tension. The squad is rich in quality and, as he notes, in potential. The idea of watching this group develop “in the coming days, weeks and months” excites him. But development cannot become an excuse. He is blunt on that point: the fact Liverpool are not yet the finished article does not lower his demands in the here and now.

“This does not mean I do not expect to win now, I do,” he writes. Every game, every competition, the responsibility is the same. He is not interested in kicking targets into the distant future. Liverpool, in his view, must be competitive from day one – and must do it while still absorbing new methods and new relationships.

That makes this opening home fixture more than a ceremonial curtain-raiser. It is a live examination of how quickly a new Liverpool can form under pressure.

The visitors will not make it easy. Nottingham Forest, as Iraola points out, have turned themselves into awkward opponents in recent seasons, capable of unsettling bigger sides and leaving scars. This is exactly what the Premier League does: it sends hungry, ambitious teams into the grand old stadiums and dares them to spoil the script.

Forest will come to Anfield looking to make a statement. Liverpool must be ready for that. Not just tactically, but emotionally. The new head coach keeps circling back to the same idea – make the most of Anfield. Use the noise, the tension, the expectation. Turn it into a weapon.

Saturday afternoon will show how quickly his message has landed.

A new voice in the dugout. A familiar roar in the stands. And a season, and an Anfield era, that starts counting from the first whistle against Nottingham Forest.