The Hidden Contributions of Florian Wirtz

Has his season been better than the headline numbers suggest?

“Dominik Szoboszlai (13 goals, 10 assists) became only the third player to reach 10+ goals and 10+ assists for Premier League clubs in all competitions this season, after Rayan Cherki (10 goals, 14 assists) and Jarrod Bowen (10 goals, 11 assists). He was the first midfielder to achieve this for Liverpool since Steven Gerrard in 2013-14 (14 goals, 14 assists).”

The above quote is from Opta Analyst’s review of Liverpool’s recent 3-2 defeat at Old Trafford. As much as reaching double figures in the two main output categories is an utterly arbitrary achievement, it feels significant. Evidence of output. A good addition to the CV.

Florian Wirtz is unlikely to hit these marks in his debut campaign with the Reds. They will likely remain tantalisingly out of reach, with his goal and assist totals currently standing at seven and eight respectively.

The frustration is that he could easily have been there already without need for a hot finishing streak by him or his colleagues. Wirtz has scored 2.45 goals fewer than expected across his league and European appearances, with teammates squandering 2.94 of his expected assists.

Moving the abacus to 10 in the goal and assist columns wouldn’t suddenly make his 2025/26 a roaring success. Being the first Liverpool midfielder since Steven Gerrard to achieve, well, anything is never a bad thing though. Ignoring penalty goals would’ve made Wirtz the first Reds midfielder in double figures for both setting up and scoring goals for 17 years, assuming he got there before Szoboszlai.

In a recent episode of their Anfield Wrap show, Rob Gutmann and Mo Stewart were discussing Wirtz’s pre-assist against Crystal Palace, his similarity of sorts with Peter Beardsley and how the pass that precedes an assist should be more widely recognised. It’s time to discuss Flo’s role in the flow before a goal.

‘Secondary, ‘hockey’ or ‘pre’ assists can be hard to define. In simple terms they are the pass that precede the assist. But what if a player delivers the ball to the goal creator when they then score themselves?

You can’t assist your own goal so can you pre-assist it? Is there a tree falling in this forest? Exhibit A, Wirtz against Newcastle.

Let’s allow it, this isn’t a court of law. As long as we treat all players the same, it seems fair enough. The data which follows comes through checking clips and pass maps, there isn’t a source of secondary assist data (to the best of my knowledge).

Liverpool have three men with more pre-assists than Wirtz this season. Two feel very obvious, the other less so.

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Before we get to them, the full Flo picture. As well as the above example and his recent pre-assist for Andy Robertson’s goal against Palace, we have one from when Manchester United visited Anfield:

With the other at West Ham:

While not identical, there’s an air of similarity to the three clips here. In each instance, Wirtz played a pass into or within the penalty area before a cross or cutback was delivered to the scorer. This will have been exactly what Arne Slot will have wanted to see the young midfielder produce, it just hasn’t happened enough. Adding a little verve on the wings this summer should make a huge difference to Wirtz’s output.

Szoboszlai has the most pre-assists, with six. Two were against Barnsley, with three of them for stoppage time goals in matches which the Reds were already winning. The only really important strike was Ryan Gravenberch’s opener in the Merseyside derby, albeit the secondary assist wasn’t really integral to the goal.

Gravenberch’s goal was set up by Mohamed Salah, who has five pre-assists in his final Liverpool campaign. Two of them put the Reds 1-0 up; at Wolves in the FA Cup and against Fulham at Anfield. The latter was assisted by Wirtz, as was one Salah both secondary assisted and scored against Galatasaray.

A stronger, more productive connection between these two players is another thing Slot would have anticipated at the start of the campaign. The partnership will never hit the heights it should have.

The man with five pre-assists that might not automatically come to mind is Curtis Jones. In echoes of the others, two were against the Tykes with one for a goal he scored himself in the cup win at Molineux.

The final player to highlight is Hugo Ekitike, as all three of his hockey assists were for opening goals. The only one for which he didn’t also finish the move himself occurred against Tottenham in north London.

High turnover? Check. Ekitike, Isak and Wirtz all involved in the brief, sharp sequence? Check. More please? Oh, hell yeah (a.k.a. check).

When we get to overall goal involvements - scoring, assisting or contributing to the sequence prior to that - we’ll have to include pre-assists in the other involvements to avoid rewarding scorers twice as in some examples above. There’s one player who stands out…

…at the bottom of the chart. Reading too much into Isak’s largely wasted first season is pointless. Nonetheless, he hasn’t yet contributed to any goals when he wasn’t the scorer (four) or assist provider (one).

Much has been made of his low touch count, the near total lack of involvement; here’s the outcome. If Isak isn’t scoring, he isn’t doing much of anything (at least based on what we’ve seen so far).

As for Wirtz, only Salah has assisted goals more frequently but almost everyone has played a part in the preceding build up more often. There aren’t too many hidden contributions to be found lurking here.

Not that every attack becomes a goal, far from it. No player with at least 1,700 minutes for any club has completed more final third passes per 90 minutes in the 2025/26 Premier League. Understat’s xGBuildup metric (which rewards players for the xG of the possession sequences in which they’re involved without shots or key passes) has Wirtz 10th in the top flight among players with at least as many minutes, second only to Szoboszlai for Liverpool.

He’s on the ball, he’s in the right area. He’s not hidden in that sense. The Reds will need Wirtz to contribute more, with a little improved precision in front of goal potentially making all the difference before anything else does.

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