When Liverpool signed Florian Wirtz in the summer of 2025 for a club-record £116m, the logic looked straightforward. The Premier League champions had recruited one of the hottest young talents in world football – a key player in the Bayer Leverkusen side that won the double in 2023-24 and a fixture in the Germany team. An exciting, productive young attacking midfielder joining the best team in England appeared a move that could hardly fail.
It has not worked out that way so far. Last season was difficult for Liverpool for several reasons, and Wirtz was among the new arrivals who struggled to make the impact expected of a £116m signing. Debate among supporters last summer centred on how long he and fellow nine-figure recruit Alexander Isak should be given before hard questions were asked, with the broad consensus settling on Christmas. As it turned out, the doubts arrived after the opening game, a 2-2 draw at Newcastle.
Jamie Carragher was among the first to voice them, suggesting on the first Monday Night Football of the season that Liverpool’s 2025 business could go down as the “worst transfer window in Premier League history”. That criticism covered several players, and Isak has since answered it with four goals in his last four league appearances. But Carragher returned to Wirtz on a new Sky Sports podcast on Sunday. “The reason I worry is, I don’t think Wirtz is in poor form since he came to Liverpool. I think what we’re seeing is what he is,” he said. Carragher argued that the gap Wirtz must close to justify expectations – taking Liverpool to another league title, to a Champions League – is almost too big, and concluded: “Wirtz would not be in my Liverpool team.”
He described Wirtz’s performance in the 1-0 win at Bournemouth as “one of the poorest I’ve ever seen him in a Liverpool shirt”. Wirtz has one assist in six games this season. Andoni Iraola was more generous, accepting that the German had started slowly. “After that first phase, we improved. Florian has helped us also to improve,” he said. “Second half he was playing much better, he was finding better spots to receive and turn. I’m much more happy with his second half.”
The Bournemouth numbers were mixed. Wirtz created three chances, joint-most of any Liverpool player along with Cody Gakpo, won six of his eight duels and won possession four times, with only Alexis Mac Allister (seven), Ronald Araújo (six) and Jérémy Jacquet (six) winning the ball more often. But only 26 of his 37 attempted passes reached a teammate, a rate of 70.3%, with too many simple balls overhit or played too close to Bournemouth defenders. He also lost possession 15 times before leaving the pitch in the 71st minute – only Araújo (24) and Gakpo (16) did so more often, although both played the whole game. There was a decisive contribution too: Wirtz’s near-post run in the second half led to the ball dropping for Isak to score the winner. A touch off a defender meant it was not recorded as an assist, but without the run the goal would not have happened.
The wider case for patience rests on how Wirtz earned the hype. He joined Leverkusen from FC Köln at the age of 16 and recorded 18 goals and 21 assists in 69 games across his first two full seasons. He tore the ACL in his left knee in March 2022 and missed 10 months, but showed no ill effects on his return, playing a central role in one of the most remarkable campaigns by any team in recent years. Leverkusen won their first ever Bundesliga title, becoming the first side to go unbeaten across an entire German top-flight season, added the DFB-Pokal and reached the Europa League final, where defeat to Atalanta was their only loss in any competition all season. Wirtz scored 18 goals and provided 19 assists in 47 games that year, the only player from Europe’s top five leagues to record at least 16 goals and 16 assists in all competitions. In his final season before moving to England he produced 16 goals and 14 assists, with only Mohamed Salah (18) and Lamine Yamal (13) managing more than his 12 assists from open play among players from Europe’s top five leagues.
His first Liverpool season brought seven goals and eight assists in 49 games, and his first league goal did not arrive until late December. It was a hard environment to enter: the death of Diogo Jota cast a dark cloud over the club, and Arne Slot struggled to get the team playing anywhere near as coherently as they had the previous year, with the champions ultimately limping home in fifth and ending the campaign without a trophy. Even so, Wirtz was by some distance Liverpool’s most creative open-play outlet, helping to fill the gap left by Trent Alexander-Arnold, and created 95 chances from open play in all competitions – at least 27 more than any other Liverpool player.
The World Cup offered a chance to deliver on the big stage, and he managed three assists in four games for Germany before they were eliminated on penalties by Paraguay in the last 32. Only two players at the tournament had more assists at the end of that round, and only five created more chances from open play than his nine. He nonetheless bore the brunt of criticism in Germany for an underwhelming showing.
With a pre-season under Iraola, the hope was that a new system and a fresh start would help, and there have been encouraging signs. He has played pretty well in at least two of his six appearances this season. In the 2-2 home draw with Nottingham Forest he was Liverpool’s main threat, denied a well-taken goal by an offside call against Jeremie Frimpong and playing a neat pass into Víctor Muñoz for the second equaliser. He was also impressive in the 2-1 home win over Atlético Madrid in the Champions League, and would have had an assist had Bradley Barcola not dragged his shot wide after being sent through by sharp play from Wirtz. There have been struggles against Newcastle, Ipswich Town and Fulham, yet the “what if” moments keep coming: at Ipswich he produced a fine turn and cross for Isak to score what would have been his hat-trick goal, only for the flag to deny him by the narrowest of margins.
The underlying numbers point upwards too. Wirtz has made 19 progressive passes in the league this season, joint 16th and level with Martin Ødegaard and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, and his 43 line-breaking passes come at a rate of 9.6 per 90 – almost double his 5.2 per 90 in the Premier League last season. Off the ball there has also been an increase: he has won possession in the opposition’s final third six times, with only five players doing so more often, while only five have applied more pressures than his 419 and only six have received more pressures than his 260. Last season he ranked joint 12th, 21st and 27th respectively for those metrics. He has also covered the most distance of any Liverpool player in three of his five Premier League games.
The eye-watering fee is undoubtedly a factor for his critics. Players are judged against their price whether that is fair or not: Paul Pogba was hardly a success story at Manchester United, but the criticism often felt over the top, largely because of his £93m fee and the hype that followed his return to Old Trafford in 2016. Another highly rated former Bayer Leverkusen midfielder, Michael Ballack, never really found his best form in a Chelsea shirt after his move from Bayern Munich in 2006. Wirtz is a 23-year-old trying to find his feet in the strongest league in the world. He is far from his best, but that does not mean improvement is impossible, or even unlikely. Six appearances into a new season is a very early point at which to reach sweeping conclusions.