There is a good player in there but he needs a manager who has an idea of setting up to get the best out of his players.Slot just does not have any idea sometimes.
Was starting to play very well then got an injury and never looked the same.
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Yep, another reason missing out on Xabi hurts.
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When Wirtz has someone to pass to it helps a lot. He’s not the type to just get dropped into a dysfunctional team and be told “fix it for us”. He’s the type of player who elevates already good teams into outstanding ones.
His underwhelming season is a coaching issue.
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A lot of the criticism directed at Wirtz comes from his exorbitant price tag, which made a lot of fans think that we got a Gerrard type player, who should be turning games around single-handedly.
Apart from the fact that even Gerrard would need a platform to succeed, which Slot has completely failed to provide, Wirtz isn’t that sort of a player and he’ll never become one.
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I was thinking more coutinho type given his flashy dribbling skills but hardly seen any of those except on small samples
Ill give him the benefit of the doubt.
He started slow, bulked up a bit and improved. He then dropped off a cliff - but then so did all the others with zero wins from 8 games in May.
I do want to see a lot more of him so I will be watching every Germany game in WC to see how good this lad really is and maybe its just the the way we use him.
He is obviously a top talent so I’m hoping he improves a lot next season now he has one season behind him in the PL.
Henry and Pires for example are 2 players (off top of my head) that didn’t set the world a light in their first seasons in the PL but then settled and were fantastic.
Phil came here with no pressure. £7m and no one had heard of him. Wirtz cost £115m and everyone was comparing with all time greats. We then sold a shit load of players (Diaz) who he would really enjoy playing with then the new players (frimpong, kerkez, isak) haven’t exactly been good either. In fact, Frimpong looks like a Championship player.
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Another thing with Wirtz and some of the other players, we don’t know for sure to what extent they are being micro-managed from Slot. As in for example… “Don’t be shooting from outside the box if there is a pass on” - “Don’t be trying a 60m pass if the short pass is on” - “Don’t be progressing play forward until other players are in support”.. etc etc.
The point being, we have no idea if our players are restricted to playing in straightjackets to accommodate the instructions from Slot, or whether we really are completely disjointed as a team with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is supposed to be doing…
Either way, to me, our players neither look comfortable nor happy playing in this kick and hope haphazard way…
A footballers career is short at best, most will want to win things in this period… After last season, and the ease which we won the PL, if suddenly you see a manager/coach that is beginning to look out of his depth as each week goes past, then some will start to question what the actual point is of playing with him at the helm. Next season will answer an awful lot of questions regarding the destiny of LFC… and whether we bounce back, or begin to accept that we are regressing beyond our once proud identity.
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I think that his last performances have been below par firstly because of the disjointed team positions, he doesn’t get the ball at the right time and in the right moment and secondly imo him and a few other internationals are saving themselves for the coming World Cup.
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Wirtz has things about his game he needs to figure out, yet if you look at the underlying stats he’s largely done what he was brought in to do as he is right at the top of the various chance creation stats. So he was creating a lot in a team that otherwise was not clicking and while still needing to get himself up to the pace of the game.
The negative reaction to him though is the downside of having paid that much money for that profile of player - someone who makes others better than who does things by himself. It can be very difficult to judge them when the rest of the team isnt playing well and not taking advantage of the things he is bringing.
Its worth remembering that he had to grow into being that guy over the course of a few years. The turn around in his long range shooting was remarkable, like he was a different player. There were periods prior to that where there were jokes about us buying the only Brazilian forward who couldnt shoot.
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Point out as no one else has and people want to criticise but Salah was in on goal and had a pass for Jones to tap in and he ran into a corridor of players.
Let’s be truthful.
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He must’ve put in some hard yards on the training pitch because suddenly he because nearly unstoppable!