I think you are spot on.
As a team you don´t want your number 10 exhausting himself and chasing into positions away from where he is dangerous. You want him fresh and ready to impact play with the ball in the positions he can be most dangerous.
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Some outlets started drawing Klopps Germany formation as a 4-3-3 in the last two matches with Flo as the LZM and Jürgen talked about his strengths in the left half spaces PreMatch.
I’ve suggested this for Liverpool at the start of the season and still think this might be the only chance to turn Wirtz into a success for us.
Doubt it’s going to happen.
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What does he add from that position? Being further away from goal.
Just thought I would share this from Allcott
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This is just a theory. But for whatever reason Wirtz plays better coming in from the left side into central positions…I don’t know if he sees the pitch better.
But when starting centrally as 10, he is not as effective.
Also when coming from the left, he worked well with Etitike (who has better movement around him), who would drop deeper allowing Wirtz to take up a central position to receive passes.
This however doesn’t work with Isak…
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Wirtz won’t have a better opportunity to silence the doubters than by putting in a match winning performance today in what should be an absolute cauldron. Disappear in this one lad and I’m afraid the writing might be on the wall for you.
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Isn’t this just showing what the ‘purists’ might say about LFC for sometime now, and what I have pointed out repeatedly, that we don’t have a system that includes a playmaker.
Everyone is trying to be the playmaker which means they end up in the same position as a playmaker. This worked under Klopp as there was chaos, organised or not, under a manager who wishes a more structured game then you need to impose on the players more discipline and tempo imposed by ‘the’ playmaker.
What was most noticeable is the lack of examples involving our midfield and Wirtz. For us and Iraola this must be the biggest worry to start with.
It does pose the question whether the project with Wirtz can work. If too many players are entering Wirtz’s space he can not be in 2 places at once and will become even more irrelevant if he changes his game to be elsewhere.
We’re down to 10 against at home in the biggest game in the season so far and he’s the first player to be subbed out.
Regardless, if you agree or not with Iraola’s decision to keep the eager, energetic but rather limited Koumas over him, just the fact that Iraola didn’t believe that he was up to it speaks volumes about what he thinks of Wirtz’s fitness and combativeness.
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Koumas came off 8 minutes later so I wouldn’t read so much into it.
Iraola decided to keep the CF on. Quicker than Wirtz and covers more ground.
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My biggest criticism of Wirtz is that he had a couple of opportunities to put a strong tackle in and just bottled it, if he had I think the ground would have erupted.
We need to show him videos of Connors tackle on Mbappe or Araujo’s at the beginning of the game, just to show him that the crowd loves someone who puts his body on the line, because I feel he is too scared to get hurt.
He jplays like he has slippers on and I am one that rates him as a very good player, but at this moment he isn’t working for us and our current style.
I was ecstatic when we got him, just at a loss how to get him out of this slump.
He is just not physically strong enough to put one thundering tackle in..
Kav would have sent him off.
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im a little bit frustrated with Flo aswell, although ill still back him as a lot of the stuff he does is still quality, but if the bar is now for Wirtz to get stuck in and leave one on the oposition, we are gonna be very dissappointed
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Mo was just as bad at tackling, but had physical strength on the ball, but I don’t like seeing any player not go in for a challenge and winning battles is part of the game and there is more than one way to win a battle, but he is struggling with our style and the players around him.
Yes the key one was when Elliot Anderson came in just outside our box, he actually pulled his foot away. If he had put his foot it, it might have been a foul on him since he has every chance to get a touch on the ball and might even a card for the latter since his studs were up. Of course the chance to get injured is there and we don’t want that but we can see the mentality when seconds later Mac stood strong in a tackle even when the opposition came in strong. We really don’t know what’s the reason but the output is only what we can judge, and it’s not looking even remotely decent. 1 assist in 560 minutes is poor for a forward player on top teams.
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I don’t care about his reluctance to tackle. It’s his overall weakness that pisses me off. Play him a bit rough and his first touch goes to shit, his passing becomes inaccurate, even in easy situations, and he generally gets bullied. He was supposed to have been on a strengthening programme last season and he appears weaker than ever, both physically and mentally.
He’s got all the talent in the world, but he doesn’t seem to have the fight to go with it.
This is a disaster of a signing.
He shouldn’t be starting hes offering nothing.
Its not lack of talent but this just hasn’t worked out for him or us.
Id look to loan out him in Jan (if we can get a replacement) and move on in the summer.
We were told he needed a fit Isak - he’s had that - bar yesterday.
He needed better Wingers - he has that.
He needed better players behind him - Macs been superb and so was Grav yesterday.
I never known a £116m player need so many things to help him stand out and yet he still doesn’t. His touch is shocking. His confidence is shot and he’s just never got going for us.
He isn’t suddenly going to become class again as its been over 50 games now.
Shame. But not all transfers work out.
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To be honest: Despite that Florian Wirtz are very overrated, Jamie Carragher are the English Didi Hamann.
Some good little moments, but overall it wasn’t enough. No need to pretend like it’s all fine, it isn’t. Without panicking, but it’s the reality. I would play him a little bit off the left (in a situation like yesterday) and yeah, he certainly doesn’t have to or doesn’t merit playing 90 minutes all the time anyway.
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He just seems so shy and timid. Like a talented kid who’s been called up too early to play on the men’s team.
Would love Iraola to find a way to unleash him but starting to lose hope a bit