Florian Wirtz - Welcome to LFC

[BigChief]

[kemm1]

Worked hard off the ball doing his defensive job and was moving about and linked the midfield and attack. Looked much better in there league and the setup got much more out of him.

The team was a lot more balanced today on defense and atrack as well. I'm sure that helped his game tremendously.

[BG1973]

He was quality, he and Szob as a combo anywhere up top will lead to chances.

[BootRoom]

Easily his best game in the Prem. Some of his instant control + pass round the corner moves were tremendous; I could watch him all day on this form. He's still got defensive duties in this system but they aren't as vital to the team as before. The key now will be to sustain this form for a string of games, and against superior teams to a grim West Ham.

[Buzzo]

He sees the game differently. When he properly kicks in he will be a machine, he never stops working, always looking to receive and he always has a plan. Should have scored today but everything else was lovely to watch.

[ame]https://twitter.com/florianfocus/status/1995157646274650343[/ame]

[peterbread]

He can take this team to another level. His ability to keep the ball moving and play those little passes and always find space is special. The type of possession the team can have will look very different with him playing at his best. Rather than the slower side to side passing we see a lot he can open teams up through the middle and bring others in to the game and lift and control the tempo. Next level player who should be the focal point of the attack from now on.

I said it earlier once he went off the team couldn’t keep the ball as well. The control and tempo went and the easy out he gave Mac Allister and Gravenberch wasn’t there. Those three linked up nicely today.

[DerKrampus]

He can take this team to another level. His ability to keep the ball moving and play those little passes and always find space is special. The type of possession the team can have will look very different with him playing at his best. Rather than the slower side to side passing we see a lot he can open teams up through the middle and bring others in to the game and lift and control the tempo. Next level player who should be the focal point of the attack from now on.

I said it earlier once he went off the team couldn’t keep the ball as well. The control and tempo went and the easy out he gave Mac Allister and Gravenberch wasn’t there. Those three linked up nicely today.

As long as the team keeps moving forward and not staying in their positions like a bunch of netballers.

[BG1973]

Easily his best game in the Prem. Some of his instant control + pass round the corner moves were tremendous; I could watch him all day on this form. He's still got defensive duties in this system but they aren't as vital to the team as before. The key now will be to sustain this form for a string of games, and against superior teams to a grim West Ham.

Only possible if Salah stays benched.

[Harv]

Only possible if Salah stays benched.

Salah is a bit of a blackhole for our side. Players just defer to him based on his past glories, but we should be a much more fluid side with him on the bench.

I really dont see an issue with him becoming a squad player. Its for his own good too.

Salah with fresh legs off the bench on 60mins when you're chasing a goal is something most teams wont want to deal with.

Salah playing 90mins every game plodding doing **** all but giving the opposition the ball constantly is something most teams are pretty happy to deal with I think.

[Corndog]

Salah is still a decent player but I think it a fair to say when he plays, the ball goes to him even when it shouldn’t. When Wirtz plays, he should be that player and I don’t think there is room for both especially as Wirtz looks best when given the freedoms to roam from one of the wings so that he can find space inside.

I think with Wirtz, the team has to sacrifice a proper wide forward which is painful as they were the stars in Klopps team. Having Wirtz feels similar to how it was with countinho in the very early Klopp days when he would come in off the left.

I’d like to see Semenyo arrive and be the start on one of the wide positions as I think it’s important to have an extremely fast and powerful player on the flank if the other one is going to have Wirtz.

Or let Ekitike play there.

[danperkins]

Was a welcome individual performance, hopefully like Isak, he can build on it.

[Sus]

Really liked this article on Wirtz (from a neutral writer) in The Athletic

Watching Florian Wirtz and thinking of Robert Pires

By Michael Walker
Dec. 1, 2025 5:10 am GMT

There were 15 or so minutes left in normal time and West Ham had the ball close to their own byline. They were being pressed as they sought an escape route. It was not some intimidating physical Liverpool press, it wasn’t a snarling Jimmy Case or Jordan Henderson chasing them into a corner, it wasn’t even Dominik Szoboszlai, it was mild-mannered Florian Wirtz.

And he kept at it and it worked and it was appreciated.

Around 60 seconds later, the young German heard his name called and off he shuffled. He looked weary.

It could be spun as another Wirtz substitution — he has still not started and finished 90 minutes in the Premier League. There is still no goal.

But that was not how the most important person in Wirtz’s professional life — Arne Slot — saw it, an opinion of rather more value than some.

Wirtz had made, for example, four successful connections with Alexander Isak in the first half; prior to this, the tally had been three all season. It was also Wirtz’s clever pass to Cody Gakpo that led to Isak’s goal; a pre-assist, as they say.

“A positive, very positive performance from Florian,” Slot said. “I want to acknowledge that, but also the team performance was better.

“We tried to create an extra midfielder and he was very important for us to find an extra midfielder. He was very good in the dribble, really good in his one-touch balls, I remember a moment when he played the ball diagonally into Cody Gakpo, which then does not lead to a shot, so no xG value. But we had many of those moments and he was part of those. So good game (from him).”

Slot added Liverpool’s “performance staff were constantly telling me, ‘He needs to go off’ — because he’s been out for one and a half, two weeks, and he only trained once.

“So to a certain extent it was maybe a risk to keep him on, but some situations ask for an exception and today was one of them.”

And this was exceptional because not many teamsheets become news items. But Mohamed Salah out and Wirtz in made this one. By the end, though, neutrals departed the London Stadium thinking not of the drama of Salah on the bench or of Wirtz’s alleged incompatibility with his new environment, but of what Wirtz can bring to Liverpool. Playing centrally, he may not have dominated the match, but he was involved throughout.

Salah himself was doubted as a young player, so too Kevin De Bruyne. Roberto Firmino received severe scrutiny when he first joined Liverpool. All pulled through.

Then there was Robert Pires. Pires is remembered today as an Arsenal Invincible, a title winner, a Champions League finalist, as Footballer of the Year and as Arsenal chairman David Dein called him: “The Bank of England — when he had the ball, he’d never lose it. Your money was safe.”

Pires’s is a glorious Arsenal and English reputation.

But when he first arrived at Arsenal from Marseille in 2000, in Highbury-Arsene Wenger days, Pires was queried as Wirtz has been. There were no “007” memes perhaps, but Pires, a hunched, creative winger who cut inside, was perceived as lightweight for playing in England, unsuited, too delicate. At £6million, a big fee then, Pires was the classic waste of money. It took him eight games to score in his new land — that would be “008” now.

When he did, it was West Ham away, albeit Upton Park. It came as a relief. Pires felt the pressure and the criticism. As he later wrote: “I’d struggled during my first few months… I’d been thrown into English football and had grappled with the physical side of the game. Matches would pass me by…

“Perhaps the size of the £6m transfer fee was weighing on my shoulders more than it had at Marseille… at times, it did cross my mind whether I’d made the right decision coming to England.”

In years to come, were £100m Wirtz to pen something similar, it would be no surprise. It is his misfortune that he has landed in long-throw Britain. We are in a certain tactical moment, one in which the velvet Wirtz and his natural subtlety are not as cherished and protected as elsewhere.

Then there is the broader football culture, where harsh analysis — “little boy lost” as Gary Neville called Wirtz during the Manchester City defeat — and constant noise make it difficult for anyone inside clubs to develop squads, teams and players. For them, patience becomes more than a virtue, it has to be a strategy, a club policy.

Even as Slot was composing his line-up, Chelsea’s £115m man Moises Caicedo was talking about his transition to Chelsea: “Sometimes you need time to adapt to a big team. I needed that.”

Caicedo’s day got worse, but the point about patience, even if obvious, needs restating.

Pires made 29 Premier League starts in his first season. He scored four goals. Had he and Arsenal parted ways in the summer of 2001, no one would have been shocked. Yet 12 months later, Pires was England’s Player of the Year. He had stood perception of his first season on its head. This is not a prediction that Wirtz will do the same, but proof it can happen.

“I’m aware it took me time to adapt,” Pires said, while thanking his team-mates for his assimilation. And he was 26 when he signed for Arsenal and had been part of the victorious France squad at the 1998 World Cup; Wirtz is 22.

A stylistic comparison is clear, and there is also a developmental one. In Rothmans Football Yearbook, the stats bible of the game then, Pires is listed in the 2001-02 edition as weighing 11st 9lb. By the 2004-05 edition, he is 12st 9lb.

Pires was 6ft 1in and not remotely bulky. Wirtz is 5ft 9in and 11st 2lb. As Arsenal did with Pires, Liverpool have begun addressing that and Wirtz has put on another five and a half pounds since signing. That should help him, as would people remembering he is months into a five-year contract in a new league in a new country.

Of course, even a player so easy on the eye cannot exist on cushioned passes. Wirtz will need to be effective in sterner tests than the one provided by a passive West Ham. But the title of Pires’s autobiography was ‘Footballeur’ and this is Florian Wirtz, a footballeur, a natural. Like Pires, Wirtz will need time and space and faith.

[Slinky Skills]

Wirz's BEST Liverpool performance.

Carragher's analysis.

https://youtu.be/TdTi9sCU6lw?si=3aRpkS7McgIQB1wZ

[BigChief]

Wirz's BEST Liverpool performance.

Carragher's analysis.

https://youtu.be/TdTi9sCU6lw?si=3aRpkS7McgIQB1wZ

I preferred his versus-Frankfurt one myself. Obviously very impressed yesterday too. Isak should start to click soon as well which will help immensely.

[peterbread]

The team was setup for Wirtz yesterday. He was the focal point and he looked like he took that responsibility on board and performed. This needs to be the approach now, let him build on it and take over as the main man in attack. That’s what he was bought for so set the team up to let him play his best football and let him go.