Florian Wirtz's Struggles Should Have Been Expected

Liverpool's big money midfielder has contributed little of note. What's a fair expectation for an import in a much changed team wracked by grief?

Florian Wirtz is struggling to show anything close to his best form. Hugo Ekitike aside, none of Liverpool’s summer recruits have been that convincing so far.

Their issues are understandable. The Reds lost their best passer and their second top scorer (among others) from their Premier League title winning campaign. Even without the emotional turmoil inflicted by the deaths of Diogo Jota and André Silva, the new signings were not added to a perfectly functioning team in full flow. The necessary adjustments will take time.

When you’re competing to win the league, time isn’t a widely available resource. There are too many matches that need to be won, too many results from other contenders to add further pressure. Even so, what’s a reasonable expectation for Wirtz, irrespective of his hefty price tag?

The German delivered 20+ non-penalty goal contributions in each of his last two seasons in the Bundesliga. Wirtz would become just the 10th player from outside the United Kingdom to do this in their age 22 season in the Premier League if he were to reach this benchmark in 2025/26, the first for Liverpool.

As much as a replication of past form feels a reasonable target for a player who cost at least £100m, his level has not been easy for relative youngsters from other countries to achieve in England. Erling Haaland is the only man in the above table who was in his first season in this country.

The 22-year-old Premier League freshman from overseas who came closest to hitting the list is Nicolas Jackson, with 19 non-penalty contributions two seasons ago. Below him we find Javier Hernández and Mohammed Kudus on 14, with Massimo Maccarone and Sadio Mané one further back. Senegal’s young attacking talent clearly prospers in English football.

If Wirtz could, say, score six goals and set up eight, he’d suddenly be in the top five imported Premier League debutants of his age. Dominik Szoboszlai was criticised for his output when making 12 goal contributions in the same position last term, so 14 isn’t an excessive target (current team issues notwithstanding).

A look across all competitions this term shows that luck has been against Wirtz. Ryan Gravenberch has created two Opta-defined big chances, both of which were converted into assists. Liverpool’s new number seven has fashioned four, yet not one has been put on target, much less scored.

Wirtz is so talented that you must believe his fortune will turn for the better. The new-look Reds have yet to gel, or play many routine fixtures. Alexis Mac Allister returning to top form would be an enormous help for the young attacking midfielder stationed in front of him too.

There is one factor entirely beyond Wirtz’s control which may mean he does not succeed this season though. It explains why he is struggling to adapt.

Regular readers may recall an article which put the strength of the 2024/25 Premier League into context. Using a model for rating teams, the ClubElo Index, the analysis established that the top flight in England was stronger than it had previously been in the modern era (so probably ever).

The collective power of the Premier League only grew this summer. The improved strength in depth was framed well in a recent Rory Smith article, in which he looked at the substitutes Spurs used against Wolverhampton Wanderers:

“Chasing a point against Wolves last week, Tottenham’s first reinforcement was Brennan Johnson, all £47.5m of him. He was followed in short order by Pedro Porro (£39.7m) and then Wilson Odobert and Pape Matar Sarr (roughly £40m for the pair). When Thomas Frank threw on Mathys Tel, it took the overall cost of Spurs’s substitutes to £157.2m.”

Wirtz left a league that collectively made a transfer profit of €203.4m this summer, in no small part thanks to his own fee. The biggest net spend by any individual club in the Bundesliga was €27.0m (by Borussia Dortmund), a bar beaten by 13 teams in England. The seven other Premier League clubs? They collectively spent almost €900m on new players, they were just able to cover their outgoings to a greater extent.

The median Elo rating for the top division in England at the end of the 2024/25 season was 1806, higher than for any previous Premier League season. It stood at 1814 after the latest round of fixtures. We live in a world in which Everton are rated as better than some title winners from the late 1990s. That sounds insane until you remember midtable outfits are able to borrow unwanted £100m players these days, which certainly helps.

Let’s revisit our top 22-year-old foreign debutants. We can exclude Haaland, given he’s a cyborg goal scorer built in a lab.

Chelsea forward Jackson accumulated his 19 non-penalty goals and assists in a league with a median Elo score of 1721, with Kudus logging his 14 the same season (2023/24). Anything achieved in that campaign should carry a little more weight than the 1684 median from 2010/11, Hernández’s age 22 season, the 1662 from four years later (for Mané) or the 1660 when Maccarone was plying his trade in 2002/03.

Weighting output by these figures works better for goals than assists, as the latter are likelier to be random. Nonetheless, if Wirtz notched 13 contributions then it could be argued they're worth an extra one if matched against Hernández (for example). That’s all hypothetical number crunching, of course.

A fact rather than theory is that the former Bayer Leverkusen midfielder is facing a far higher standard of opponent than was the case in Germany. Very few Bundesliga clubs could stay afloat in the Premier League if ClubElo is any guide.

If Wirtz was still at Leverkusen, there’d be a 76.5 per cent chance he’d face a club no better than Burnley and likely worse in a given match. He’d be unlucky to play a side better than Nottingham Forest, who sit 17th in the Premier League table.

Everyone Wirtz has faced in England bar the Clarets would be at worst the fourth best side in Germany, the third toughest he could face with his former club. There is a clear step up in quality from any other league, which may explain why few new attacking imports have delivered much so far. It has only taken three goals and an assist for Ekitike to lead the way for this group; a decent start but hardly earth shattering.

Some would say this article is making excuses for Wirtz’s lack of goals or assists. Perhaps it is; there will always be less grace given when you cost £100m. It also shows what he’s up against while trying to adapt to life in a foreign country with new teammates, though: the strongest Premier League there ever was.