22 Sep 2026 05:41:05
Lots of wirtz comments.
All wirtz needs to do is sit and watch coutinho clips on repeat.
Drop deep for the ball - take a man on dribble past and find the spaces and shoot. He has possibly more ability than coutinho. He has the same frame as coutinho.
He can do a lot better than coutinho.
For some reason he is trying to play technical passes and be cute and hold the ball!
No need just express - dribble run stepovers and shoot from distance. He has the talent for all that and he did all that at Leverkusen.
He needs to become a problem and he needs to score 2-3 from distance so teams know they can't just sit on him. People have to rundown to close him and that opens space for those cute passes
People have got it wrong its not the physical aspect its not the skill. Its the IQ. When they don't let you play your game dribble past find space and shoot.
I remember this with coutinho when he joined he was weak, got bullied and lost a lot of balls and we had that horrible brendan season. Then klopp happened and he had that freedom to do whatever he wants play where the game takes him and shoot from wherever he feels like.
And then he scored some bangers and the confidence of that lit a fire that made him the best player we had and bought us money that we are still spending ?.
22 Sep 2026 06:33:04
He has nowhere near as much ability as Coutinho.
22 Sep 2026 07:03:43
Coutinho was a baller, Things he did with the ball was sublime, Wirtz isn't close. We are going to spend the whole season excusing wirtz with "no runners ahead of him". The fact is we need to accept he has flopped massiveley and needs to be sold.
22 Sep 2026 07:07:53
Don't be ridiculous.
22 Sep 2026 07:58:21
I don't think Wirtz is able to move like that, coutinho wasn't quick but he tuned and moved with ball effortlessly and had a wicked shot on him.
I'm not sure what it is with Wirtz to be honest as I actually think the skill is there but he's not showing it on the pitch. How many times has he hit the ball and he has less power than a kid.
I'd imagine he's the best player in training but can't replicate it on match day.
Maybe it's nerves. Maybe the actual match is too quick for him, sometimes it just doesn't work.
Did anyone actually watch him in Germany? I bet you'd be surprised by what you actually saw. His goals and assists were a lot higher but did he actually ever run a game of football? He definitely didn't when we played them with slot, we won comfortably in fact I don't remember Wirtz doing anything at all.
Be good if someone did watch him over there that knows.
22 Sep 2026 08:40:00
Coutinho was a highlights player. He had ability, but ultimately did not do enough for the team in the 90 minutes, especially off the ball.
We improved when he left.
{Ed025's Note - im with you Taurus, a lot of people have selective memory mate..
22 Sep 2026 08:49:33
Coutinho, and the team, thrived best when he playing as part of the front three. Not as much as the center point of a three man midfield.
22 Sep 2026 08:50:37
Wirtz isn't even highlights player Taurus.
22 Sep 2026 09:07:00
So far Wirtz should be compared more to Luis Garcia or Benayoun than Philippe Coutinho.
22 Sep 2026 09:15:18
Thats why i say see those clips. See what coutinho did. Then ask if he can do it why can't I.
Essentially coutinho had same problem when he joined but he was a bargain basement signing and nobody had expectations so i didn't bother us. Plus we had suarez firing on all cylinders so coutinho was not the main guy
Wirtz is huge price and supposed to be the main guy.- that is why i dint believe in 100m ++ players. They never work.
Not one 100+m player has ever worked not even one not for any club bar maybe ronaldo.
Not even one.
Yet big clubs keep making these signings.
22 Sep 2026 09:26:32
I have been living in Germany for the past three years, and the way Bundesliga fans revere him is how PL fans revere Gerrard.
However, Wirtz is more of a high volume player than a big moments player. At Leverkusen, everything went through him, and to be honest he was very good at running the games. He would drop deep, float all over the pitch, make nice touches, keep the ball moving, and find nice passes to the wing-backs. However, he was not a highlights reel player even in Bundesliga. While he can sometime score good long range goals, he doesn't have the technique/power of Dom. While his first touch and ball control is elite, he can't get past people while dribbling like Coutinho or Rogers because he doesn't have that acceleration. While he is a good passer, he is not like Trent. The issue is that the team really needs to be built around him to maximize his talents. And it is very different to how in PL the star players are generally who also have the biggest moments. I think all of this would have been much less of an issue had he been able to show his abilities consistently for us. Right now he looks so short of confidence that even the things that he is undeniably elite at (first touch, manipulating space, etc) seem to be deserting him. I can only hope that Iraola and Klopp together can help him shine. He seems like a nice lad and I really want him to do well.
{Ed025's Note - sometimes TKA you just have to admit you signed a lemon mate..
22 Sep 2026 09:34:00
Personally I think Florian would be better if he was playing as part of a three with us no matter who the other two were. i know it's a mute point because Iraola doesn't play that way and the thinking behind it is to get him close to Isak but I just think he's getting too isolated up there.
Its like we're playing with a from two.
22 Sep 2026 10:28:49
Wirtz needs to get in the gym, he's brushed off the ball so easily.
22 Sep 2026 10:39:48
He's not a lemon, has loads of ability, we just need to see it.
{Ed025's Note - if its yellow, looks like a lemon and smells like a lemon then its usually a lemon Ecogsi...admitting it seems to be the problem mate..
22 Sep 2026 10:50:47
Watching videos of Coutinho is a genius idea. I wonder why no one thought of that before. Just let him watch videos of Coutinho, download it into his brain, and we'd have a Coutinho regen in our team. Maybe we should let all our forwards watch videos of Messi while we're at it too so that we'd truly have a world class forward line ;)
22 Sep 2026 11:58:12
I think you might have the wrong kind of idea of the kind of player Wirtz is, OP, thekoparmy is pretty spot on in his description of the player. Wirtz is a combination/connection kind of player who links things up all across the left side of the opposition half. You need a functioning midfield, a left back that combines with him and a forward (the way Schick and Wirtz worked together rotating up front was a work of art) who works with him for him to be the kind of player that he can be.
I very much agree that Wirtz looks a player short of confidence and that the criticism looks like it's going to his head and affecting him, he hasn't been anywhere near as good as he can be in critical moments. Still he does keep trying and doesn't let a poor start affect him to the point of just giving up for the rest of the game, he continues showing for the ball everywhere, running non-stop off the ball, making the kinds of runs off the ball to make space for others that he needs to. So you can say that he is lacking in confidence for sure, but at the same time he has the mentality and the awareness to do the basic things that a team player needs to do.
His understanding with Isak is actually incredibly poor right now, sometimes Isak wants the ball inside of the block and Wirtz pokes it around the defenders the other way around, and sometimes it's the reverse, they just never seem like they are on the same page. I expect that this will not always be the case, and it will invariably improve over time.
Yes Wirtz was very very poor against Bournemouth. At the same time if some of the very good chances he created the previous games were finished and if he had got at least one of the goals that he could very well have scored (such as the excellent finish from the assist by the borderline offside Frimpong) his numbers wouldn't actually be very shabby. I still think he is a top top player and he really needs to show it in a Liverpool shirt soon. I believe we will start to see a better version of him very soon though.
{Ed025's Note - hmmmm..
22 Sep 2026 12:05:10
Find it funny people say Coutinho was only good under klopp which is a straight up Lie, the kid was Brilliant from his 1st game under BR and scored and assisted a lot in his 1st 6 months at the club.
Also Coutinho cost 8 million £ not 110 million +. Right now Coutinho was twice the player Wirtz is but it could change if Wirtz starts doing something sometime soon maybe ?.
22 Sep 2026 13:13:47
Ahh."if only". those 2 words are becoming a regular feature when analysing Wirtz. if only he did this. if only the others did that. if only he tied his laces tighter..
22 Sep 2026 14:21:10
Last fan of Slot, I'd argue Rice and Caicedo have justified their price tags with what they've brought to their respective teams (granted Chelsea have been a mess, but Caicedo hasn't)
22 Sep 2026 16:09:59
@shanklys ghost I think what we expect from Wirtz will never happen. By we, I mean the English media. He is just not that player, never was even at Leverkusen. He is not a highlights reel player, he is and has always been a system player. He can't win you matches alone, but as he showed at Leverkusen, in the right system he can make you win matches consistently.
Maybe the penny will never drop for him in PL, but I sincerely hope that it does, because I would really love him to shine for us. In the right environment he raises the floor of the team significantly, just because of how a high volume player he is.
22 Sep 2026 16:47:52
We just need 9 other outfield players then to compliment Wirtz by the sounds.
22 Sep 2026 17:40:01
Sounding like that to me too JK.
22 Sep 2026 19:03:21
Indeed, Dracred. To even compare Coutinho to Wirtz is bonkers because they are not even the same type of player and both offer very different things.
And just so we are clear, Cou's best work was done as a wide (left) no. 10, not in behind the striker because we essentially played with two strikers with Suarez/Studge while under Klopp, we played with Bobbie in the false 9.
Again, I do not allow nostalgia to trick me into believing in things that literally did not happen back in the day.
22 Sep 2026 19:03:30
9? No. Just a functioning midfield that know when to run and when to sit deep. We want wirtz forward connecting with isak and barcola, yet he's coming deep to get the ball while szobo flicks his hair and gravy loses the ball.
You don't buy a Ferrari and take it off roading.