“They're playing with two wingers and Wirtz at 10, so they're relying heavily on the two midfield players to try and cover so much space,” Danny Murphy said on BBC Match of the Day just hours after Wirtz created nine open-play chances, the most by a single player in a Premier League game since January 2021.
“Instead of a No.10, where Wirtz is struggling to impact games, put three midfielders in.”
It speaks to the hysteria that hangs like smog around Florian Wirtz that he cannot escape criticism even when his creativity sets a five-year Premier League record and inspires Liverpool to a gritty win at Brentford.
Does Wirtz hold the key to a post-Klopp utopia?
It isn’t just the price tag that makes Wirtz a lightning rod. Slight and silky – ‘twinkle-toed’, is the word they would spit back in the day – Wirtz can be guilty of an apologetically light touch, playing with all the charisma of a man excuse-me-ing his way through a mosh pit to get to the toilets.
More than that, Wirtz is the grand symbol of the post-Klopp world that Liverpool are struggling to birth. If only they could tap into his talent, if only his hesitancy fell away, then Liverpool’s identity would emerge.
That might turn out to be true, just not quite how anyone had planned.
In the second half on Saturday, when searching for a plan to break down ten-man Brentford, Andoni Iraola stumbled upon a tactical solution to the Wirtz problem – and it’s disarmingly simple.
When Wirtz rose to prominence at Bayer Leverkusen by contributing 22 goals and assists in consecutive Bundesliga seasons, 2023/24 and 2024/25, he was almost exclusively deployed in a 3-4-3 system as one of two number tens. Just as Xabi Alonso now (usually) deploys Morgan Rogers and Cole Palmer together in the middle, it was Alonso who started playing Wirtz with a partner, Jonas Hoffman.
In other words, Wirtz is being played out of position. Perhaps his problems in England have nothing to do with physicality or speed, but formation and positioning. My message to Murphy: they don’t need one less No.10, they need one more.
Liverpool switched to an unusually lopsided 4-2-3-1 after Rio Ngumoha came on, with Rio, nominally on the right, effectively playing as a second number ten alongside Wirtz, a move that overwhelmed Brentford centrally.
It might seem like a minor shift for Wirtz, but the difference between operating alone or as one of two is enormous. That it led directly to both Liverpool goals is all the evidence we need of that.
The equaliser, when Wirtz took a brilliant touch before playing the through-ball to assist Victor Munoz’s goal, was thanks to that more Leverkusen-y shape; Wirtz only had space for the pass because Rio – starting in the middle – was tracked out wide by Mamadou Sangare, pulling the Brentford midfielder out of position:
Liverpool began to create chances at will from within that box-shaped midfield, leading to the winner, too, where space was found to cross into the penalty area only because Brentford had two No.10s to keep track of:
The obvious caveat is that Liverpool were playing against ten men. Other Wirtz critics might point to the fact that he lost possession 19 times, the second-most of any Liverpool player, and won just one of his nine duels.
But we can forget the details. By playing two number tens in the second half, Iraola mimicked the only system in which Wirtz has previously excelled. If unlocking Wirtz really is the key to discovering a new Liverpool, then a formation change is surely worth a try.
