Florian Wirtz produced one of his most impressive displays in a Liverpool shirt last weekend at Brentford, but Andoni Iraola needs his No 10 to keep sparkling with the Reds now facing three crucial tests at home that will tell us a lot more about where his game is at. The headlines and chatter after Liverpool's 3-0 recent loss to Man City at Anfield, though, would not have made pretty reading for the club's £116m playmaker, with former Reds captain Jamie Carragher even going as far as suggesting the German needed to be axed from the team after another underwhelming showing against the Premier League leaders. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player "I'm just sorry to say this Florian Wirtz signing it's not working and it hasn't worked so far and Gravenberch should not be sitting on the bench when Wirtz is playing for Liverpool" said the Sky Sports pundit.
"It's not harsh to be having a go at Wirtz right now, he's got to do so much more. "I struggle to think of one game where he's won Liverpool the game or he's been the man. He was brought in to be a star of the Premier League.
I felt he could be the Kevin De Bruyne that at times got Man City over the line. Florian Wirtz recordered 35 goals and 47 assists in his 140 Bundesliga games for Bayer Leverkusen "Wirtz has been here for 55-60 games, it's a lot and I don't see it changing. Wirtz where he's almost nailed on that he plays every week in that No 10 position it has to stop.
"I think he needs to come out of the team, I said that last time out and I'm going to say it again." But if seven days is a long time in politics, it is an eternity in football and Wirtz will head into the club's upcoming run of tricky fixtures with a spring in his step having shone in Liverpool's recent trio of wins at LASK and Brentford and home to Villarreal. The 23-year-old pulled the strings in the visitors' 6-3 Champions League trouncing in Austria, creating the second of Bradley Barcola's hat-trick with a delightful inside pass in a tight space, before again producing the goods in west London to help the Reds came from behind and inflict Brentford's first defeat of the season on Saturday. Iraola's side were still trailing the Bees' ten men when Wirtz's vision unlocked the home defence for Victor Munoz's well-taken leveller just past the hour mark, one of nine chances he created from open play in the contest - the most in a Premier League game since 2021 and the most in an away match for more than 15 years - while in total he has set up a league-high 20 openings this season.
And Wirtz then followed that up with a match-turning second-half cameo in Tuesday's 4-3 home win against Villarreal in which he scored his first goal since April - meaning he now has a goal involvement in three straight matches - as Liverpool made it five victories in their last six games in all competitions. What is just as encouraging, though, as far as Iraola is concerned is the understanding Wirtz and his fellow £100m+ recruit from Paris Saint-Germain appeared to be developing on the lefthand side of the Reds' forward line in those victories as he looks to make his side more potent in attack. "He's coming in from two very good games, he played very well LASK away, he helped the team a lot in possession, out of possession," was Iraola's assessment of Wirtz's last two performances.
"I hope we can keep him there. You ask me every day basically about him, we analyse and over scrutinise everything, but when he does well also, it's fair to say." The Liverpool boss sounded exasperated he was still being quizzed about Wirtz and of course he would much prefer not to be, but when your big-money No 10 contributed just seven goals and ten assists in 49 games across all competitions in his debut campaign on Merseyside, then he has been in the game long enough to realise the outside noise will not simply go away after a few eye-catching showings. For one thing, it is too small a sample size to start making definitive judgements on the Germany international, while the match conditions in both those encounters undoubtedly suited him coming against a LASK side making their Champions League debut and a Bees team forced to play the whole of the second half with only ten men following Yehor Yarmolyuk's straight red card.
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