Iraola hopes four Liverpool stars will return for Leeds clash | OneFootball

Andoni Iraola says he hopes to have four Liverpool players back involved for the first time this pre-season when his side take on Leeds on Sunday.

The Reds beat Wrexham 1-0 in their latest pre-season friendly in New York, thanks to a Rio Ngumoha goal.

Ryan Gravenberch, Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak and Jeremy Jacquet were among those not involved again, but Iraola says he is hoping to have them all play a part later this week.

Y”es, my idea is for Ryan [Gravenberch], for Florian [Wirtz], for Alex [Isak], for even Jeremy Jacquet to have their first minutes against Leeds,” he said.

“We’ll see how many minutes they can play but we have to start slowly, slowly integrating more of the senior players that have had less training sessions. I think they should be ready on the weekend to have their first minutes.”

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Iraola, however, says these early pre-season games have been a valuable experience for some of his younger players.

“I’m happy today because we played a lot of the young players,” he said.

“Some of them had difficult match-ups, [Luke] Chambers playing as a centre-back against big bodies, he covered very well and played very well from the back. The wingers – Josh Abe, Kieran Morrison at the end. Good performances from young players, which I think is always good.”