Wirtz Does Not Need Criticism Right Now, He Needs Protecting

Why Gerrard’s Take on Wirtz Deserves More Weight Than Carragher’s Steven Gerrard has waded into the debate over Florian Wirtz’s torrid time at Liverpool, and his take is worth sitting with for longer than a quick headline allows.

Speaking on Overlap Daily, Gerrard did not dodge the obvious problems. He conceded that “Wirtz’s confidence is shot” and that performances have not been good enough, but he stopped well short of agreeing with Jamie Carragher’s suggestion that the answer is simply to leave the German out of the side.

A £100m Price Tag Nobody Asked For It is worth remembering how we got here. Liverpool paid in the region of £100m to bring Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen, a fee that was always going to invite scrutiny the moment things did not click immediately.