# Today’s Action from the AXA Training Centre 🎬📌 Liverpool
There is a particular rhythm to Kirkby in the closing days of August, and anyone who has followed Liverpool through the transition from Arne Slot to Andoni Iraola will recognise it immediately. The gates open early, the analytics staff are already at their desks poring over data from the previous match, and by mid-morning the training pitches at the AXA Training Centre are dotted with cones, mannequins and small-sided grids that hint at exactly what the head coach wants to drill into his players before the weekend. This is a club in the middle of a genuine reset, not just a change of manager but a change of footballing identity, and every session at the training base right now carries a little more weight than usual because of it.
Iraola’s appointment in the summer was always going to bring adjustment, and the early weeks of pre-season made that abundantly clear. Sessions in the United States were built around quick, direct combinations and rapid transitions, with small-sided games designed to encourage players to move the ball on within two touches rather than take an extra one to settle it. Anyone watching from the touchline could see the head coach positioning himself in the middle of drills, constantly stopping play to reset shape, much in the way his predecessor did before him. It is a hands-on approach, and it has continued back on Merseyside now that the whole squad has reconvened at Kirkby after the disruption of a long pre-season tour, a World Cup involvement for some, and a staggered return for others.
That staggered return has been one of the defining stories of the summer at the AXA. Virgil van Dijk and Cody Gakpo were among the first back, reporting straight to the training centre rather than joining the group in America, giving the coaching staff extra one-on-one time with two of the squad’s most important figures before the rest of the group landed. New signing Victor Munoz cut short his holiday to get a head start on integrating with his new teammates, a decision that says plenty about the mentality Iraola is trying to instil from day one. Alexis Mac Allister, delayed by his involvement in the World Cup, only rejoined training in the second week of August, and the coaching staff have had to manage his reintegration carefully, mixing individual conditioning work with gradual exposure to full-squad sessions so he arrives at matches fit rather than simply present.
Not every story out of Kirkby this summer has been straightforward good news, and that has been part of what makes the current mood inside the building so interesting. Jeremy Jacquet’s continued absence from group training sessions has raised eyebrows, with the young defender notably missing from squad photos and matchday plans despite senior players like Jeremie Frimpong being cleared after a scare in the final pre-season friendly in the United States. Fitness staff have been characteristically tight-lipped about specifics, which is standard practice at this club, but the absence has not gone unnoticed by supporters scrutinising every squad list that emerges from the training ground. It is a reminder that for all the optimism around a new head coach and a refreshed style of play, the unglamorous business of managing knocks, niggles and rehabilitation schedules never stops mattering.
Then there is the transfer business hanging over the place, which always adds a layer of tension to life at a Premier League training base in the final days of the window. Curtis Jones has been a near-constant topic of conversation, with reports of an improved offer from Inter Milan doing the rounds even as the academy graduate has continued to turn up, train, and go through his gym work alongside the rest of the group. There is something almost poignant about watching a boyhood fan who came through the club’s youth ranks quietly getting on with his job while his potential departure is debated in the media, and staff and teammates alike have been careful not to let the noise affect the tone of sessions. Meanwhile, the departure of Trent Alexander-Arnold last year to Real Madrid still lingers in conversations about the club’s evolving identity; his absence changed the calculus at right-back, opened the door for Frimpong to establish himself, and forced the coaching staff to rethink how they build attacks from deep. These are not abstract boardroom matters as far as the players are concerned. They shape training-ground rotations, partnership-building drills, and the specific patterns of play being rehearsed on the pitches outside.
Defensively, there has been plenty for Iraola and his assistants to work through, and it has visibly shaped the emphasis of recent sessions. Liverpool’s pre-season form was a mixed bag, with the team conceding in the majority of their warm-up fixtures and suffering the disappointment of losing to Crystal Palace in the Community Shield after twice surrendering a lead. That kind of result tends to sharpen focus at a training ground rather than dampen it, and observers who have caught glimpses of recent sessions describe an increased emphasis on defensive shape in transition, with extra repetitions dedicated to recovering position quickly after turnovers in midfield. Virgil van Dijk, still very much the on-pitch general despite scrutiny of the team’s defensive record, was even spotted producing a moment of outrageous quality in one recent session, a reminder that however much structural work is being done, there is no substitute for individual class when things get tight in a match.
The goalkeeping department has its own quiet subplot playing out at the AXA this month. Giorgi Mamardashvili’s continued development alongside the more experienced Alisson has been one of the more encouraging threads of pre-season, with the Georgian given an extended run of minutes in various friendlies to build match sharpness. Alisson himself was handed a longer break than most after a demanding season and international commitments, and his phased return has been carefully choreographed by the goalkeeping coaches, who have used bespoke sessions on the smaller training pitches to build up his sharpness without overloading him too early. It is easy for supporters to overlook this kind of granular, position-specific work when the headlines are dominated by transfer rumours, but it is exactly this sort of detail that defines whether a club’s medical and performance staff are doing their job well.
Out on the main grass pitches, the emphasis under Iraola on turning defence into attack at speed has become one of the clearest visual signatures of these sessions. Small-sided games are frequently structured so that after a shot is taken on one pitch, the attacking players sprint immediately to an adjoining pitch to continue the move, forcing defenders to scramble back into shape at pace. It is an unforgiving, high-intensity way to train, and it mirrors exactly the kind of transitional, vertical football the head coach wants his side to play once the Premier League season is fully underway. Midfielders such as Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai have been central to these exercises, tasked with the two-touch, quick-combination play that Iraola wants to become second nature by the time autumn fixtures start piling up. Younger academy prospects have also been drafted into first-team sessions where numbers have been needed, giving the coaching staff a useful look at how far players like Trey Nyoni and others have progressed, even if their involvement is likely to remain occasional for now.
There is also something worth saying about the facility itself, because the AXA Training Centre continues to do exactly the job it was designed for back when it opened in 2020, bringing the first team and academy together under one roof in Kirkby. The building’s layout, split lengthwise so that the first-team operate on one side and the U21 side on the other, still allows for the kind of pathway between youth and senior football that the club prizes so highly, and it is not unusual on a normal training day to see a young academy player pulled across for extra reps with the seniors if the head coach feels it will benefit either party. The three full-size grass pitches outside, along with the indoor sports hall, hydrotherapy suite, and gym facilities, mean that whatever the Merseyside weather throws at a session, the technical and physical work can continue largely uninterrupted. It remains one of the most complete training environments in English football, and visitors who get the rare chance to walk through it, including former players offering guided tours to media, consistently describe it as a facility built with total attention to detail, from the sports science suites to the recovery pools.
What stands out most about the current period at the training ground, though, is the sense of a squad and staff trying to build cohesion under time pressure. With the Premier League campaign now underway and fixtures arriving thick and fast, there is precious little time between matches for the sort of extended, structural work Iraola would ideally want to embed his ideas fully. Every session, then, becomes a balancing act between recovery for players who have just featured, sharpening for those who are about to, and tactical rehearsal for patterns the head coach wants to see carried into the next fixture. Sports scientists monitor GPS data closely to ensure players are not overloaded, rotating intensity across the week so that legs are fresh come matchday, while analysts feed clips from recent matches directly into the planning of specific drills, closing the loop between what happened on Saturday and what gets worked on come Monday morning.
Media access to all of this remains tightly controlled, as it is at every top-level club, but the club’s own photographers and video team have continued to give supporters glimpses into life behind the AXA’s doors, whether through galleries of session photos or short training clips shared across the club’s channels. These snippets have become their own small cottage industry among the fanbase, pored over frame by frame in search of clues about starting elevens, fitness levels, or simply the mood among players following a result. It says something about the scrutiny modern football clubs operate under that even a few seconds of footage showing which group a player trained with can spark hours of speculation, but it also reflects genuine hunger among supporters to understand what is happening inside a building most of them will never get to visit.
For all the noise around transfers, injuries and tactical experimentation, there remains a simple truth at the heart of what is happening at Kirkby right now: a new head coach is trying to stamp his identity on one of the biggest clubs in world football, and every training session is a small but meaningful step in that process. The mood among staff, by most accounts, remains positive and hard-working, buoyed by the belief that the disjointed patches of pre-season form will smooth out once players have had more time inside Iraola’s system. Senior figures like Van Dijk continue to set standards in training that ripple through the rest of the squad, while academy graduates get to watch and learn what it takes to sustain a career at the very top level. It is unglamorous, repetitive work in many ways, running the same patterns over and over until they become instinctive, but it is also the foundation on which entire seasons are built.
As the days shorten and the Premier League calendar intensifies, the AXA Training Centre will remain the engine room of everything Liverpool try to achieve this season. Whatever happens with the remaining transfer business, whatever the final headlines say about departures or new faces, it is on these pitches in Kirkby where results are ultimately shaped. The next few weeks promise more of the same relentless routine: early starts, detailed tactical work, careful management of returning internationals, and a coaching staff trying to translate pre-season ideas into consistent Premier League performances. For supporters, the appeal of “today’s action” from the training ground lies precisely in that ordinariness, the reassurance that behind every matchday spectacle sits countless hours of unseen, disciplined work, carried out in a building purpose-built for exactly that task. It may not always make for dramatic headlines, but it is the quiet, consistent engine that keeps a club like Liverpool competitive at the very top of the English game, and it is why every scrap of news, every photo, and every glimpse of a session at the AXA continues to matter so much to those who follow this team closely.