Liverpool: Andoni Iraola can make success of step up from Bournemouth at Anfield, with Spaniard primed to become next Reds boss after Arne Slot's sacking

Andoni Iraola will face a "completely different" challenge at Liverpool - but after his "small scale" success on the south coast he is primed to bring his "magic" with him to Anfield.

That's the verdict of Sky Sports News reporter Mark McAdam, who has covered Iraola's rapid rise at Bournemouth first-hand.

Iraola has now verbally agreed to become the next Liverpool head coach, following Arne Slot's sacking, and in the Liverpool's Big Summer podcast special, McAdam outlined the enormity of the step-up the Spaniard is facing.

He also explained why he believes Iraola is well prepared for the demands of the role...

'One of the biggest challenges in world football'

"I think he's ready but ultimately we don't we don't know how ready he is because everything is completely different," said McAdam.

"I walk into a Bournemouth press conference on a Friday and there will be four or five journalists there. He's going to walk into a Liverpool press conference and suddenly he's going to be faced with 25, 30, 40 journalists maybe even more on a Champions League night.

"The intensity, the scrutiny… he can drive in and out of the Bournemouth training ground and there's no one there that wants a signature. He goes into the Vitality Stadium and he'll do a couple of selfies. This isn't the case with Liverpool. There will be hundreds of fans that are clamouring to get that moment, to get that selfie, to get that autograph and the journalists will be asking the questions.

"He's going to feel like he is the central cog of that whole city whilst he's the head coach at the football club.

"It's going to be completely different. He's very down to earth, he's very humble he's quite a quiet, shy guy but is he ready and right for it? Yeah!

"I've been lucky enough to watch him at close quarters and be hugely impressed with what he's done on a small scale. The big question is can he translate that to one of the biggest challenges in world football."

'A different style of man-manager to Klopp'

As well as the enormity of the club, Iraola will also be working with high-profile players with different demands to some he may have experienced at Bournemouth. It will be a test of Iraola's man-management technique he has used so far.

"The personalities are going to be very different, the egos are going to be very different," said McAdam. "You're not walking into a dressing room filled with young players that have ambitions to play Champions League football or to get to bigger clubs - and that's the philosophy and the model of Bournemouth: buy young, buy as cheap as possible and then say, 'We'll give you the platform to develop you, improve you and then send you on to Liverpool, PSG, Real Madrid' as they have done recently.

"Now you're at a destination club. It doesn't really get much better than when you're at those big clubs because they're the ones that are expected to challenge in every single competition.

"So Iraola now has a very different mindset that he has to have.

"Interestingly with Iraola, he doesn't have individual relationships with players. He lets his coaching staff speak to players. He obviously speaks to them on the training pitch, he does his presentations but at Bournemouth Tommy Elphick, Shaun Cooper and Pablo de la Torre have the relationships with the players. They know what's going on with the players' wives, girlfriends, kids, families, what's happening off the pitch.

"They do all of that work and then feed into Iraola, he will assimilate that and work out what he wants to do but he doesn't have that relationship perhaps like Jurgen Klopp would. So he's a very different style of man manager and obviously it's completely worked at Bournemouth but again it's one of the many questions that will now be posed - can that style of management translate into a club like Liverpool where you've got players that have won the Premier League, you've got players that have competed in the Champions League, competed at the highest level for their national side?

"[The Liverpool players] are not someone that is on a little bit of money that's desperate for the chance to improve and develop. You've got someone that's already been there done it."

'Bottle of magic' - How Iraola can restore connection with fans

Iraola's style of play could also have an important impact off the pitch, too, rebuilding the connection between Liverpool supporters and their team.

By ramping up the excitement levels for supporters, Iraola can build a winning formula fuelled by passion in the Anfield stands and on the famous pitch.

"The biggest compliment I can pay Andoni Iraola is he made Bournemouth fans fall in love with the team," said McAdam. "They loved going to watch games at the Vitality Stadium. They saw the identity, they saw the philosophy and even at the beginning where things weren't going so well and results weren't there, they could see what was happening and they knew it just needed time.

"If Liverpool fans love going to Anfield, they are in love with their team, they love the style of football, they love what they're seeing, then they will go, 'OK, we can see what's going on here. We might need to give a little bit of time to go where we want to go in terms of winning nine out of 10 games and challenging for the Premier League, but I am starting to fall in love with this group of players and this philosophy'.

"That's what Iraola did at Bournemouth. He built a really clever group of players, he built bridges with the supporters and everyone just loved him. In the end, you've got Bournemouth fans going into games against Liverpool and Arsenal and Man City thinking, 'We'll win today and even if we don't, I know that we're going to be brilliant to watch'.

"If Iraola can bring that little bottle of magic that he had with Bournemouth and take it to Liverpool and create that atmosphere... then the rest will start to follow.

"And I do hate to compare it and mention Jurgen Klopp but that's exactly what Jurgen did when he arrived at Liverpool. That emotional connection is something that Liverpool fans have been missing, certainly this season because that emotional connection was missing between Liverpool fans and Arne Slot and that didn't necessarily help the atmosphere at Anfield."