Florian Wirtz has managed one assist in six appearances for Liverpool this season, and the criticism has been loud. Jamie Carragher said on the first Monday Night Football of the campaign that the summer of 2025 in which Liverpool signed Wirtz could be remembered as the worst transfer window in Premier League history.
Carragher was direct about Wirtz specifically. He said he feared that what supporters were watching was not a player in poor form but simply the real Wirtz, and that the gap between the German’s output and Liverpool‘s expectations was too large to close. He added that, if the decision were his, Wirtz would not be in the starting eleven.
What the numbers actually show
Opta analyst David Segar, writing in The Guardian on 24 September, acknowledged that Wirtz’s 70.3 per cent pass-completion rate against Bournemouth in a 1-0 win was below the standard expected of a creative midfielder. Too many straightforward passes were either overhit or directed straight to Bournemouth defenders, and he lost possession 15 times before being substituted in the 71st minute.
Yet Segar also pointed to figures that complicate the simple narrative. Wirtz created three chances against Bournemouth, level with Cody Gakpo for the most in the team. He won six of eight duels and recovered the ball four times, a total only Alexis Mac Allister, Araujo and Jaquet exceeded. A run he made at the near post also contributed to Alexander Isak‘s winning goal, though the deflection off a defender meant no assist was recorded.
Across the first five Premier League matches, Wirtz covered more ground than any other Liverpool player in three of them. In the league this season he has already completed 19 progressive passes, placing him joint 16th, and his 43 penetrating passes give him 9.6 per 90 minutes, nearly double his rate of 5.2 per 90 from last season.
He has also recovered the ball in the opposition’s attacking third six times, with only five Premier League players doing so more often.
A difficult first season and what came before it
Last season Wirtz scored seven goals and added eight assists in 49 appearances as Liverpool finished fifth and missed the Champions League. The campaign was shaped by difficult circumstances, including the death of Diogo Jota, and Arne Slot never found the fluency that had defined the previous year.
Before joining Liverpool, Wirtz’s record at Bayer Leverkusen was exceptional. In the 2023-24 season he contributed 18 goals and 19 assists in 47 games, the only player across Europe’s top five leagues to reach 16 goals and 16 assists in all competitions. In his final Bundesliga season he added 16 goals and 14 assists, with his 12 open-play assists second only to Mohamed Salah and Lamine Yamal among the five major leagues.
At the 2026 World Cup, held across the United States, Canada and Mexico, he provided three assists in four games before Germany were eliminated by Paraguay on penalties in the round of 32. Only two players at the tournament had more assists, and only five players created more open-play chances than his nine.
The case for patience
Segar noted that Wirtz, who is 23, has produced at least two high-level performances already this season. In Liverpool’s 2-2 home draw with Nottingham Forest he was the team’s biggest threat, having a goal ruled out for a Frimpong offside before assisting Victor Munoz’s equaliser. In the 2-1 Champions League home win over Atletico Madrid he was equally impressive, setting up a clear chance that Bradley Barcola missed.
Liverpool manager Antoni Iraola was measured in his assessment after the Bournemouth match. He said Wirtz had a slow start to the game but improved in the second half, finding better positions to receive and turn, and that he was much more satisfied with Wirtz’s performance after the interval.
Segar drew a comparison with Paul Pogba at Manchester United, arguing that Pogba’s reputation was damaged disproportionately by the weight of his then-record £93m fee and the hype surrounding his return to Old Trafford in 2016. The £116m spent on Wirtz invites the same scrutiny.
Segar’s conclusion was that six games is not enough data to determine whether Wirtz can reach the level Liverpool paid for, and that Iraola’s system is still in its early stages.
