Andoni Iraola

Formation: 4-2-3-1 wide

Position changes: LM & RM to LW & RW, 2 CDMs into LDM & RDM

Tactics:

• Defense: Constant Pressure, 20W, 90D

• Offense: Slow Build Up, Possession, 45W

• Set-Pieces: 8 players in the box, 4 Corners & Free kicks

Player instructions:

• GK: Comes for Crosses, Balanced

• CB: Default

• RB & LB: Join Attack, Overlap

• LDM: Cut passing, Stay Back, Drift Wide, Cover Wing

• RDM: Cut Passing, Balanced attack, Deep Playmaker, Cover wing

• LW: Stay Wide, Get in Behind, Come Back, Get Into box

• RW: Cut inside, Get in Behind, Come Back, Get into box

• CAM: Drift Wide, Get into Box, Come Back

• ST: Dirft Wide, Get In behind, Stay Forward

Notes:

• Andoni Iraola’s tactic is known as “high risk-high reward” because his team pressures aggressively-high & it requires players to commit to the attack, taking inspiration from Bielsa in terms of running his team to the ground in both attack & defense.

• If stamina is the issue then use Press after Heavy Touch & activate Team Press.

To be honest never heard of him nor do I watch Spanish football, so curious to hear the thoughts

Andoni Iraola is happy to address the elephant in the room.

“Gary O’Neil’s work was excellent,” he says. “But the change came because the ownership was looking for a different style of play.”

From the outside, “the change” Iraola speaks of was particularly cold-blooded, even by Premier League standards. O’Neil, the man who had led Bournemouth to Premier League safety, was dismissed in June. . Yet the 41-year-old does not bristle when O’Neil’s popularity comes up, even with his new side yet to register a win in seven Premier League games.

“I’m sure there will be many fans who remember him and would have liked him to stay at Bournemouth,” the Spaniard tells Telegraph Sport. “That’s normal and I accept that.”

That is Iraola: candid and engaging. In the Premier League big time, having cut his teeth at Rayo Vallecano, a long and successful career in the dugout surely now beckons.

Except … it does not.

“I don’t see myself [working] for a long time, no,” he reveals. “It’s a very personal thing. Balancing it with family life is complicated, especially when you have children. You can’t change places every two years. There will come a time when you have to prioritise other things. I’m 41 now, I have no idea how long it will last but I know I won’t be there for long.”

It is a staggering admission from a man who has been tipped as one of the bright young things in European management. But then, Iraola dances to his own tune.

He was, after all, a manager who fell into the trade almost by accident. He never had any serious designs on becoming a coach, until a two-year spell playing under Patrick Vieira in New York lit a fire in him. “Patrick gave me a new perspective on the game, because he came from the Manchester City school,” he wrote in The Coaches Voice in February. Now, he is known for ambitious, high-press, attacking football.

There is one problem, though. It is all very well playing like Manchester City when you have the world’s best players at your disposal. But Bournemouth operate in a different sphere.

Iraola is realistic enough to know that a fixed dogma on how to play is not the route to success - even if a change in style, to match the tactics of the top teams, was in his job description.

“I can have a style or an idea that I identify with, but football belongs to the players and you have to maximise their strengths,” he insists. “That requires you to change things from your initial plan and we are obliged to do that.”

Ah yes - the players. While the initial scepticism from O’Neil loyalists was clear, what about his former charges, who had achieved Premier League survival just weeks earlier? No matter how professional a playing staff can be, there is always likely to be a challenge in overhauling a side’s style.

“I explained my principles to them and they accepted it well,” he says. “At Bournemouth there is an exceptional work culture. They are used to obeying and they have done everything we have asked them to do. Maybe the type of training has changed them compared to last season. They have to think more when making decisions in games. We try to make them know why they do what they do. That knowledge is going to make us better.”

“If the results don’t come, it will be my fault”

Ryan Christie gets a special mention - “the most tactically intuitive player I have in the squad. He knows what’s going on at all times” - but Iraola has his eyes open to what will happen if his ideas do not bed in soon.

“We haven’t won any league game yet but I’m happy at the club, I feel supported, I feel the affection of everyone,” Iraola says, before pausing: “[But] if the results don’t come, it will be my fault.”

A former defender who played over 500 times for Athletic Bilbao, he is part of the new Basque set - the collective of managers who hail from the small region in northern Spain. Iraola comes from the town of Usurbil, nearby to where Mikel Arteta and Unai Emery grew up. Other notable locals are Txiki Begiristain and Juanma Lillo (Manchester City’s director of football and assistant coach), Julen Lopetegui (the former Wolves manager) and Xabi Alonso (the one-time Liverpool midfielder who is now in charge of Bayer Leverkusen).

And yet, among the fostering of ideas from this independent-minded corner of Spain, comes a throwback.

“There are body fat limits set by the medical services,” Iraola reveals, laying out the finer details of his creed. “And there are small fines if players are overweight.”

Not that many fall foul of the rules. “We hardly have a pot because the players know how to behave and take care of themselves.

“That money at the end of the day is for them, to have a group dinner or whatever.”