Liverpool’s Florian Wirtz Challenge: Adapting to Premier League
Florian Wirtz was the prize of last summer’s market. The one everyone circled in red. Real Madrid wanted him. Bayern Munich wanted him. Manchester City wanted him.
Liverpool got him.
They smashed their transfer record, laid down a British-record £116 million, and sold a vision: Anfield as the stage, Wirtz as the leading man for the next decade. A potential legend, signed at 22, straight from the heart of Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen.
But the script hasn’t quite followed the hype. Not yet.
Cherki shines, Wirtz grinds
While Wirtz has been working his way through a tough adaptation in the Premier League, the player City turned to instead has exploded. Rayan Cherki, effectively City’s Plan B, is playing like a headline act.
His latest performance against Chelsea underlined it. He ran the game, scored, created, and drew a glowing verdict from Pep Guardiola.
“Rayan is an extraordinary talent – the second goal, the pass to Marc [Guehi],” Guardiola said. “The problem for Rayan is sometimes he plays in positions too close to Donnarumma, your talent has to be in the final third. Be close to Haaland, close to wingers.
“We will bring the ball to you. It’s not necessary to come down [the pitch].”
That is Guardiola in a sentence: ruthless clarity about where the danger should live. Keep your artists high. Feed them. Let them decide matches.
It also cuts straight to Liverpool’s Wirtz problem.
Touches, territory and a tactical mismatch
Cherki is touching the ball 90 times per 90 minutes in the Premier League this season. For his position, nobody sees more of it. City have taken a high-usage creator from Lyon – where he averaged 75 touches per game – and turned the volume up even further. They’ve built the structure so the ball finds him, over and over again, in the areas that matter.
Wirtz, by contrast, has gone the other way.
At Leverkusen, he was the Bundesliga’s touch magnet in his role, averaging 86 touches per game. Everything flowed through him. He drifted, combined, probed, constantly involved.
At Liverpool, that number has dropped to 71. Around 20 fewer touches per 90 minutes than Cherki, and 15 fewer than Wirtz himself was used to in Germany. That’s not just a statistical footnote. It’s a change in his football life.
This isn’t about effort. It’s about design.
City have taken a creative hub and made him the centre of their possession wheel. Liverpool have taken one and, too often, left him on the edge of the picture.
A good season that feels like less
Strip away the expectation and the fee, and Wirtz’s debut campaign is far from a disaster. Six goals and five assists in 43 appearances in all competitions by mid-April is respectable for a 22-year-old in his first English season.
He ranks in the 94th percentile for chances created. The raw creativity is there.
He has also had to fight through disruption. A back injury in late February and early March cost him rhythm and minutes. When he did pull on the shirt for Germany during the March international break, he reminded everyone what he looks like when the game is built around him: two goals and two assists in a wild 4–3 win over Switzerland.
Back at Liverpool, his role has shifted. Early in the season, Arne Slot used him largely off the left, asking him to operate as a wide playmaker. Recently, Wirtz has been moved more often into his preferred central attacking midfield slot. Unsurprisingly, his influence has grown. He set up a goal in the 2–0 win over Fulham on April 11, another sign that his adaptation is finally starting to bite.
So why does it still feel like City won the summer?
Because Cherki is being treated like the jewel he is – and Wirtz, for long stretches, hasn’t been.
Guardiola’s blueprint, Liverpool’s blind spot
Guardiola’s comments about Cherki were not just praise. They were a manifesto.
Stay high. Stay between the lines. Let the structure serve you.
“Your talent has to be in the final third,” he said. “We will bring the ball to you.”
That is the essence of how City maximise their creators. The system does the legwork. The technicians deal the cards at the top of the pitch. Cherki doesn’t need to drop deep, beg for the ball, and knit everything together from his own half. City’s midfield and build-up do that for him. His job is to hurt teams near the box.
Wirtz, by contrast, has too often been dragged into Liverpool’s chaos. He drops, he searches, he tries to connect the dots. When he does that, he’s further from goal, further from the penalty area, further from the zones where he was lethal for Leverkusen.
Liverpool’s structure under Slot has not consistently funnelled possession into his feet in advanced areas. The numbers tell the story: fewer touches, less territorial dominance, fewer repeated opportunities to decide games.
This is not a question of whether Wirtz is good enough. His creativity metrics, his international form, his flashes in a red shirt all say he is. It’s a question of whether Liverpool are building around him with the same ruthless clarity City have shown with Cherki.
Untouchable – but underused
Inside Anfield, there is no panic. Liverpool have dismissed rumours of a summer move to Real Madrid and made it clear Wirtz is “untouchable” – a cornerstone of their long-term project, not a chip to be cashed in. Interest from Manchester City and Bayern Munich hasn’t gone away, but Liverpool are betting that the best version of Wirtz is still to come once he fully adjusts to the league’s physicality and the tactical demands of his new role.
They might be right. In fact, the recent signs suggest they probably are. His return to full fitness, the move into more central zones, the uptick in output – all of it hints at a player edging closer to the level that made him the most coveted talent of last summer.
But the comparison with Cherki lingers. One club has taken a gifted playmaker and flooded him with the ball in the final third. The other has signed an equally gifted one and, for too long, left him to chase the game.
Guardiola has already spelled out the formula: keep your artists high and feed them relentlessly.
The question for Liverpool now is simple: will they reshape their attack so that Florian Wirtz stops surviving in their system and starts ruling it?
