Should Liverpool be worried? Pre-season form, injuries and squad depth concerns for Andoni Iraola ahead of season opener

How much does pre-season mean? It depends who you ask.

Fans itching for the return of football after a summer forced into other past-times are left yearning to see new players in action and the tangible feel of momentum building ahead of the new season.

But at Anfield, that pre-season buzz has come to a crunching halt both on and off the pitch.

There is no empirical formula to the importance of pre-season results. Take last summer when Arsenal were beaten by Thomas Frank's Tottenham in Hong Kong and lost at home to Villarreal in their penultimate friendly.

Within nine months, Frank was out of a job and they were crowned Premier League champions and were a penalty shoot-out away from winning the Champions League.

By that logic, Liverpool's back-to-back two-goal collapses to Leeds and Monaco can be waved away. And there are positives for Andoni Iraola, with Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak - who endured testing first seasons on Merseyside - flourishing in pre-season. Both were on the scoresheet against Monaco on Sunday.