Three weeks is a long time in football, and for Andoni Iraola, it should have been an opportunity.

Five Premier League matches into his Liverpool career, the broad outlines of his team are beginning to emerge.

The pressing is improving.

The defence has produced three consecutive league clean sheets.

Alexander Isak is scoring.

Florian Wirtz is beginning to find his spaces.

But there are still obvious problems.

Liverpool can lose control when their first press is beaten.

Their attacking structure is not yet consistently fluid.

And they have already had to fight back from difficult positions twice in their opening five league games.

Normally, an international break this long would be perfect for a new manager.

There is just one problem.

Iraola does not have most of his players.

Eighteen members of Liverpool’s first-team squad have been called up for international duty.

That leaves Iraola working with a significantly reduced group at the AXA Training Centre.

The manager had already acknowledged that reality before the break, explaining that Liverpool would still train but that only four or five senior players would be available at certain stages.

That changes what a manager can actually achieve.

You cannot rehearse your preferred pressing structure without the players expected to execute it.

You cannot build attacking combinations when half the forwards are away.

You cannot fully prepare your strongest XI for Manchester City when that XI is scattered across Europe.

The break is not useless.

Far from it.

Iraola can use the available players to work on principles rather than simply formations.

The positioning Liverpool want when possession is lost.

The triggers for the first press.

The distances between the midfield and defence.

How quickly the team needs to recover its shape.

Those are repeatable behaviours.

They can be coached even with a reduced group.

And the smaller squad could actually give Iraola more individual time with certain players.

That could matter for players returning from injury, younger members of the squad and those still trying to establish themselves within the new system.

The difficult part comes later.

Iraola previously said he would have no more than three days to prepare properly for Manchester City once his international players return.

That is not much.

Especially when several of those players will have travelled extensively and played multiple competitive matches.

The manager therefore has to split the break into two different phases.

The first is about teaching and refining.

The second is about integrating.

That second phase could be the more important one.

The situation has now become even more complicated.

Alexander Isak has returned from Sweden with a minor thigh issue.

Cody Gakpo has withdrawn from Netherlands duty with an ankle injury.

Both are being assessed by Liverpool’s medical staff.

Suddenly, Iraola is not simply waiting for his internationals to return.

He is waiting to discover which ones will actually be available.

That could dramatically change the final few days of preparation for City.

Perhaps that is the biggest lesson from this first international break.

Iraola is not inheriting a finished Liverpool team.

He is building one.

The opening five games have shown encouraging defensive progress, attacking quality and plenty of character.

They have also exposed the areas still requiring work.

The international break gives Iraola the chance to address those weaknesses.

But it will not give him the luxury of having everyone together.

That is why the days immediately after the break could be more important than the three weeks themselves.

Once the internationals return, the theory becomes practical.

The pressing has to work.

The midfield has to protect the defence.

The attackers have to understand one another.

And Iraola has to turn everything he has been teaching individually into one coherent Liverpool team.

Three weeks sounds like a lot.

For a new manager with only a handful of players at his disposal, it might not be nearly enough.