It starts now. Not in Chicago, not at Soldier Field, not when the first competitive ball is kicked in anger next season. The real beginning of the Andoni Iraola era at Liverpool happens this week, quietly, in Kirkby, where a new manager meets his players properly for the first time and the hard work of rebuilding begins.

The majority of the pre-season group report to the AXA Training Centre on Tuesday, and for Iraola, that means first introductions with some significant names. Dominik Szoboszlai, Curtis Jones and Milos Kerkez are among those arriving, alongside Kostas Tsimikas, Giorgi Mamardashvili and Federico Chiesa. Harvey Elliott, Wataru Endo and Conor Bradley have already checked in for initial assessments, so Tuesday represents the moment the full picture starts to take shape for the new head coach.

The day before that, Iraola faces the media for the first time in his new role. He will speak to the press from 11am at the training ground, a week before the squad fly out to the United States for their pre-season tour. Liverpool will be based in Chicago throughout the trip, with friendlies against Sunderland in Nashville and Wrexham in New York, before the tour concludes with a match at Soldier Field against Leeds United.

But before any of that, there is a week of graft in front of Iraola, and perhaps the most important week of his tenure so far. This is where impressions are made. This is where he starts to stamp his identity on a group of players who, let's be honest, drifted badly last season. A fifth-place finish as defending champions. A style of football so tepid it made watching paint dry feel eventful. The sacking of Arne Slot on 30 May, and the swift appointment of Iraola in his place, told you everything about how the club viewed what went wrong.

Slot was not a disaster. But he was not what Liverpool needed either. The issue was not inconsistency — if anything, the Reds were painfully consistent, just consistently ordinary. They won, lost and drew with a familiar flatness that sucked the life out of Anfield and left supporters watching through their fingers rather than leaping off their seats. The indifference that bred was ultimately what ended his time at the club.

Iraola has been brought in to change that feeling entirely. Key decision makers at the club believe his high-intensity, front-footed style is precisely the antidote Liverpool require, and it is not hard to see the logic. Energy, aggression, directness — qualities that have been conspicuously absent. Whether those qualities can be drilled into this squad over a pre-season is the question nobody can fully answer yet, but the intent is clear.

Off the pitch, the backdrop remains a little complicated, it has to be said. The future of sporting director Richard Hughes is still up in the air, with reports suggesting he is closing in on a move to Saudi Pro League side Al Hilal. The departure of Michael Edwards from his role as Fenway Sports Group's CEO of football adds another layer of uncertainty. Neither situation is ideal at a moment when a new head coach is trying to build momentum and clarity.

FSG, for their part, are privately confident the infrastructure is sound and that the groundwork has been laid to give Iraola what he needs. Hughes, for as long as he remains, is the man tasked with carrying those plans through. Whether supporters share that confidence is another matter entirely.

There has been spending. Victor Munoz arrived for £34.5m and Jeremy Jacquet for £60m, meaning close to £100m has already gone out of the door. But nobody at Anfield would tell you the squad is where it needs to be. The most glaring gap remains up front, where the absence of Mohamed Salah looms over everything. The club is understood to be seeking a different profile of winger rather than a like-for-like replacement, but the need remains urgent and the market has not delivered an answer yet.

Supporters are going to need to see movement, both in terms of transfer business and what they see on the pitch. Words and intentions only carry so far. The hangover from last season was real and it needs to be cleared, not managed. Clean slates and fresh starts are the order of the day for many in this squad.

Iraola knows all of this. He is an intelligent, driven manager and he will not need it spelling out. This week in Kirkby is his chance to make clear from the outset exactly what he expects and exactly what this Liverpool is going to look like. The players need to feel that shift from the very first session.

The tour comes next, then the real season beyond that. But right now, in a training ground in Kirkby on a Tuesday morning, the work that actually matters is just getting started.