Before he arrived at Anfield, top managers couldn't stop gushing about Florian Wirtz. He was described as "the full package," someone who "loves to play" and is "one of the top players in the world." That was the player Liverpool paid a then-club record €117.5 million ($133 million) for last summer. So far, the return has been five goals and three assists in his debut season, plus a solitary assist so far this campaign — numbers that have left Liverpool's fanbase divided, former players calling for him to be dropped, and transfer speculation starting to circulate.
The context matters here. Liverpool followed up an 84-point title-winning season with a 24-point collapse, losing 12 Premier League games after just four the year before — their worst losing return in over a decade. Manager Arne Slot was fired, and Mohamed Salah's contract was terminated by mutual agreement amid his own decline. Wirtz, with his modest output, has become an easy target for a much wider malaise.
What made Wirtz so special at Leverkusen
To understand what Liverpool were buying, it helps to look at just how rare Wirtz's statistical profile was in Germany. Using data from Europe's top five leagues since roughly 2010, only a handful of players have combined heavy involvement in possession with genuine end product on a per-90-minute basis — at least 80 touches, 80% pass completion, two shots and two chances created, seven passes into the box and six touches inside it.
Since 2010, only five players have hit that kind of high-touch, high-output standard across a heavy-minutes season while also completing at least two successful dribbles per 90: Lionel Messi, Lamine Yamal, Eden Hazard, Michael Olise — and Wirtz, who did it twice before turning 22, for a club with roughly Crystal Palace's financial resources.
What's changed at Liverpool
Almost every one of those underlying numbers has dropped since his move to England. Wirtz is taking fewer shots, creating fewer chances, completing fewer take-ons, and touching the ball nearly 20 fewer times per game than he did in his final two Bundesliga seasons.
The clearest explanation is where he's getting the ball. At Leverkusen, Wirtz averaged 50 touches per game in the attacking third; at Liverpool, that's dropped to 35. Specifically, he's rarely finding the ball in what coaches call "zone 14" — the central area just outside the box that's become a key defensive priority for modern teams to shut down. He averaged 19 touches per 90 there in Germany; at Liverpool, it's down to 14.
His shot quality hasn't actually collapsed — he generated 0.29 expected goals per shot in his last two Bundesleague seasons and is at 0.25 now, a modest dip. He's scored five goals from 7.7 expected goals this season, compared to 18 non-penalty goals from 15 xG across his final two years in Germany, so finishing has been the issue there rather than shot quality. The bigger drop is in creativity: he generated 0.37 expected assists per 90 in his last two Bundesliga seasons, tied for the league's best among players with 3,000-plus minutes. At Liverpool, that figure has fallen to 0.18, only 18th-best among Premier League players with 2,000-plus minutes.
The case for patience
Wirtz still isn't a peripheral figure. Since last season, only six other players in England with at least 2,000 minutes have matched his combination of shot volume and chance creation, and he remains among the league's leaders for touches and dribbles completed inside the box. He's also tied for third in the league with 33 line-breaking passes received — no other Liverpool player has more than 18.
Using the Futi player-rating model, which converts a player's overall on-ball impact to a 0-to-100 scale, Wirtz finished last season with a rating of 60 — seventh among Premier League central attackers, behind Rayan Cherki, Bruno Fernandes, Tijjani Reijnders, Cole Palmer, Enzo Fernández and Mikkel Damsgaard. His rating this season is still 60.
There's also a broader argument about timing. Wirtz was 22 last season and is 23 now — before what's typically considered a player's peak years of 24 to 28. Comparisons are drawn to Martin Ødegaard, who took until his third Arsenal season to become a genuine superstar, and to Bruno Fernandes, who didn't leave Portugal until he was 25. The Premier League itself has grown significantly stronger relative to the Bundesliga in recent years — by one metric, 18 Premier League clubs currently rank in the world's top 50 compared to just six Bundesliga sides — meaning some of Wirtz's decline in output may simply reflect a much tougher league, not a decline in ability.
Liverpool are also, by most accounts, a club in transition — a new head coach, a director of football appointment pending, and a squad mixing young players, players in their prime, and those past it. Whether Wirtz's Leverkusen brilliance ever fully translates to the Premier League remains an open question. But for a club that paid a record fee for his prime years rather than a single season, there's still a case that the verdict on Florian Wirtz is far from settled.
