28 Sep 2025 21:25:19
Ed1 - your thoughts on Wirtz now? I’m increasingly worried. Do you still feel he’ll come good and do you think he’s better on the left or behind the striker?
{Ed001's Note - he will be fine so long as he isn't played on the left. Wasted there.}
29 Sep 2025 00:24:06
If he was any good we'd be higher up the League.
I'm worried that we can't go any higher up the League.
29 Sep 2025 01:03:00
Leave him on the bench for a bit and give him a few balls of Scouse, the lad shirks out of challenges and has the body of a 12 year old.
{Ed001's Note - no he doesn't and no he doesn't.}
29 Sep 2025 06:53:45
That was a mistake from Slot. Playing Wirtz on the left but not on the left just meant it was even more crowded in the middle. He said afterwards he wanted to overload the midfield but the problem has been that the middle of the pitch is so overcrowded Wirtz has no space to play.
Maybe it was worth a try but I don’t think he’ll be doing it again.
29 Sep 2025 07:50:03
He has the body of a 12 boy…some of the people on this site talk utter dross. Luka Modric is widely considered one the best midfielders in the last 10 years of world football…. proving you don’t need to be a unit to be successful. Give the lad time, we are top of the league as things stand. It has been a great start to the season, support the team and players and then judge at the end of the season!
Grav, Fabinho, Robbo and others I am sure took time!
29 Sep 2025 01:47:42
Cheers ed1. Do you agree he hasn’t been at his best though? I’m wondering if you’re notice positives that maybe I’m missing and was curious to hear your point of view.
{Ed001's Note - it is not him that is the problem. The other players are not making the runs or giving him the movement. Worse is you get moments like against Palace when Bradley literally ran across in front of him and blocked him. It is going to take time for them all to understand each other.}
29 Sep 2025 08:35:14
'If he was any good we'd be higher up the League' we can't be any higher than top of the league!
29 Sep 2025 09:43:37
I completely agree we got to allow the players time to get used to each other my only concern is lack of urgency and being to negative
Only my opinion though
Up the pool.
29 Sep 2025 10:31:54
"Queen of scotty road", your post literally proves you watch games with your eyes wide shut.
29 Sep 2025 11:10:47
Clearly things will take time to click. They do every season - even when we haven't made a load of signings.
Aside from Konate and Macca's form, I am concerned that we're not making longer passes to give the counterpress a chance and force some of these mid to low block teams discomfort.
I would like to see Konate or whoever plays at RCB launch a few toward Gakpo or down the line to Mo. Even if the passes are not perfect, it gives us an opportunity to counterpress with Wirtz and Szobo.
Without this, we are being forced to always create the perfect goal.
29 Sep 2025 11:17:40
I think people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones when it comes to commenting on how others watch the game.
29 Sep 2025 11:49:30
Yes there are moments where Wirtz has not executed what he has been trying to do as well as we have hoped, but as I have said numerous times on here I think the problem is more tactical than anything.
Slot got it totally wrong giving him a floating role and allowing him to drift around into the center when he gave him the 'left wing' instead of Cody. In the first half it was basically Kerkez on his own on the left, Mac Allister sometimes in the left half space and Wirtz roaming around the field, often dead center. This basically completely nullified our left hand side, and gave us no cover on the left at all when we lost the ball.
Cody has such a defined responsibility on and off the ball that doing this against a team that has built their entire offense around quick transitions is suicidal, Slot basically started with a 4 man midfield that was given license to push forward and no left sided attacker in the first half.
This is also why I think it's unfair to pile on the players for playing poorly in the first half. Konate has a tendency to make bad decisions when playing against a big burly center forward like Mateta, and as strong as Ibou is physically, I think Mateta has him beat for physicality and power, and that's no shame, because Mateta can bully most any center half in the world in that situation. The question is then why didn't we set up in a way that would protect him more and not allow that to happen time and again? Even if we could claim that Ibou made the wrong decision to get too tight and try to outmuscle Mateta every time, we shouldn't allow him to consistently have to make that decision or get it wrong. Ordinarily he is a very decent one on one defender but when it was evident it wasn't working we should have changed it quickly.
In the second half Konate looked ten times better (not that he looked amazing, but he went back to being able to reliably do what he is expected to do), because Slot put Cody on and switched Wirtz back to midfield, where he could operate without having to share the same spaces as Macca.
But then again we ran into a problem that we have run into a lot and that Ed001 rightly highlights- space isn't simply something that the opposition denies you, it is also something you create through your team mates pulling defenders away by making runs. At Bayer the whole team was built around creating space for Wirtz to operate, for us we still haven't worked out how to do that, and it doesn't look like we've fully committed to building that rapport that would trust him to be at the center of it all pulling the strings.
Thus we're judging Wirtz on his success at doing things that he wasn't necessarily bought to do- ball retention around the center circle, tackling in his own half, winning duels, etc. Of course he needs to be able to do that at a high level, our team demands that from every player except Mo, but until we build a way for him to get on the ball and do Wirtz things, then we aren't going to see the best of him.
Wirtz is one of the best team players in the world, he sees things that others don't and sees avenues open up faster than most anybody. He is not somebody who is going to dribble past three defenders and stick it in the top corner all the time, though he has done that at Bayer numerous times it is not his primary quality. He is not Lamine Yamal. His game is moving, creating a dangerous situation with one touch, moving into space that can hurt the opposition, exploitation of space. We need to create the environment where we can facilitate that, and the payoff will be huge for everyone around him.