Florian Wirtz

[Steveo]

There’s nothing wrong with Wirtz at all… he’s been fine… not great but certainly not shyte… And the eye test shows us his quality. It’s thereX

…however the point being made by some is that we simply didn’t need him… certainly not at £113 million… he could be superb in a better footballing side… one with more high volume of progressive plays… but this isn't it… not this season anyway… we should have put that money into prioritising a specialist number 6 and a senior CB to actually shore up the spine of this team… those were the glaring holes we ignored to sign a luxury player we didn't have a clear plan for.

I was over the moon when we signed him assuming we would still capture the more needed entities. But no - huge fees were also put down on 2 strikers…

[Red October]

He creates chances aplenty. Understandably people will debate the quality of those chances, but still good that they're occuring.

Indeed, in terms of open play chances created from open-play in debut Premier League season for Liverpool, the lost looks as follows -

62 - Dirk Kuyt (2006/07)
53 - Mo Salah (2017/18)
52 - Jermaine Pennant (2006/07)
50 - Florian Wirtz (2025/26)

He’s actually just the second player to create 50+ chances from open play in the Premier League at all this season - Bruno Fernandes is flying on that metric with 73 at present.

I think what everyone wants to see from him now are -

- More clear-cut, high-quality chances like perfect through-balls. This will hopefully improve if the movement and pace of the attackers ahead of him improves, but he of course needs to do some of this work himself.

- Giving the ball away a little less. He is inclined to be high-risk in an attempt to get someone into an attacking position, so when he gets it wrong, we lose the ball and are often countered on.

- Goals. I'd been hoping he would get 10 or so League goals this season to do his bit with chipping in to our total tally and he has fallen short there.

Absolutely a player there though and he would probably be bottom of my "sell" list. We've seen managers fail to get the best out of players before (look at Firmino under Rodgers v under Slot) and I hope in time we are getting to see someone else at the helm continue to help Florian on his trajectory.

He'll also start next season a bit bulkier, which will help him.

I'd be shocked if they sold him so soon. I think we should give him another season. Unfortunately, if Slot is manager I have zero confidence he will get the best out of him. If an Alonso or other comes in maybe we will see more from him. I think the biggest issue is the price tag. If he came in for about 60m we'd probably be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Keita was here for 3 seasons I think and hardly ever produced anything. I think Wirtz has already shown a lot of potential. His touch and quick movement are crazy at times. It's just you wish that if we were going to spend 100m, you'd wish we'd got what the team were crying out for.