There is something genuinely refreshing about a manager who just tells you the truth. No spin, no corporate deflection, no vague talk about 'assessing options.' Andoni Iraola stood up at Chicago Fire's Endeavour Performance Centre on Tuesday and told anyone who would listen that Liverpool's squad, as it currently stands, is not good enough. That takes a certain kind of honesty — and it is exactly the sort of clarity this club needs right now.

Asked directly how many players he expected to bring in this summer, Iraola declined to put a number on it — sensible enough given how unpredictably the transfer market moves — but he left absolutely nobody in doubt about where the gaps are. A winger, he said, is a definite need. Defensive cover on the right side is another pressing concern. And with several injured players still some way from fitness, the squad depth Liverpool currently possess is, by his own admission, worryingly thin.

"No, I think it is difficult to say a number when the market is open," Iraola said. "You have to be always open to new options to improve the squad. There are obvious situations where we need to sign players. A winger for example, we definitely need to sign a winger, but there are other situations where we will have to analyse what the market gives you, what is the cost, how we also see the players we have. We have some tricky positions where we have injured players, that we trust, but it is still not the ideal situation, so it will depend on a lot of things."

The winger hunt has been well-documented at this point. Liverpool have been keeping tabs on Yan Diomande and Bradley Barcola at various stages, and the £34.5m deal to bring Victor Munoz to Anfield after his post-World Cup break is already done. The profile the club are after is clear enough: young, quick, capable of making things happen in the final third. Names like Monaco's Maghnes Akliouche have also been looked at, with Liverpool understood to have made initial enquiries on the 24-year-old. PSG are tracking him heavily too, mind you, which will not make that one straightforward.

The scale of the rebuild required only really hits you when you list the departures. Mohamed Salah, Andy Robertson, Ibrahima Konate — all gone, all for nothing. That is three senior, experienced players who were central to what Liverpool were not long ago. Simply getting back to where this squad was twelve months ago requires significant investment, never mind the ambition of pushing on under a new head coach.

In some ways, it echoes the midfield overhaul of 2023, when four players came through the door for somewhere in the region of £150m. That kind of bold, committed investment transformed Liverpool's engine room and set the tone for what followed. Whether sporting director Richard Hughes can pull off something similar in the wide areas this summer remains to be seen, but the intent, at least from the manager's end, is not in question.

Then there is the right-back situation, which has quietly become one of the most pressing issues of the summer. Conor Bradley suffered a long-term knee injury back in January and is still some distance from being fully fit. Iraola has been characteristically direct about it.

"I think it depends on the Conor situation, at the end if you have a fully fit, healthy Conor Bradley, we are very happy, ready to go, and we would not be asking ourselves these questions," Iraola said. "I think it is a situation that is tricky, because we trust Conor in the long term, we know, we want him to be our right back, but right now he is still a little bit far from returning, so with the centre-back, with the right-back situation, in terms of defensive depth, we are very thin right now. So I think it is a solution that we are trying to find."

Options in that area were being explored as far back as January. Denzel Dumfries, then of Inter, was reportedly on the radar at that point, and former head coach Arne Slot was keen to explore a deal for Luthsarel Geertruida — a player he had managed previously — only to find the move too complicated given Geertruida's loan situation with Sunderland from RB Leipzig.

The fact that Liverpool were at least looking tells you the right-back problem was identified long before this summer. The question now is whether the club acts decisively enough to solve it before the season begins in earnest.

Liverpool do not tend to do wholesale rebuilds. The last decade has had maybe one or two moments where the squad was genuinely overhauled rather than tweaked, and 2025 is shaping up to be one of those moments. The club knows it. Iraola knows it. And crucially, Iraola is saying it out loud, which means there is no hiding place for anyone.

Hughes has the mandate. The manager has been clear about what he needs. Now it is time to get it done — because the new era cannot afford to start on the back foot.