Liverpool are beginning to see Florian Wirtz look like the £100m player we signed, with Opta detailing how the German playmaker’s early adaptation period is giving way to consistent end product.
The 22-year-old arrived from Bayer Leverkusen with huge expectations, and while there were flashes from the start, his impact in the decisive moments took longer to match the hype.
Opta’s analysis summed up the shift neatly: “Liverpool’s £100 million summer signing was expected to hit the ground running. He didn’t, but Florian Wirtz is starting to live up to the initial hype.”
Florian Wirtz is starting to look like Liverpool’s £100m player
The key point from the Opta piece is that Wirtz’s recent run has changed the conversation from “nice moments” to match-shaping influence, which is what you buy when you spend that sort of fee.
Opta noted that after “only managing three assists with no goals in his first 21 games for Liverpool”, Wirtz has since produced “nine goal involvements (6G 3A) in his last 11”, which is the kind of swing that alters how opponents have to prepare for us.
Here is the story of his season in a simple snapshot.
| Period | Games | Goals | Assists | Goal involvements |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First spell (early season) | 21 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Recent spell (upturn) | 11 | 6 | 3 | 9 |
That improvement also matches what we can see with our own eyes, because Wirtz is getting into more dangerous zones and playing with more conviction when Liverpool speed the game up.
Arne Slot has also framed it as a process where the player has done the work and the staff have shown trust, saying: “First and foremost, credit to the player because he has to do the work. Not only on the pitch but also in the gym.”
Slot added: “Then as a manager, even if he is struggling a little bit at the start, you have to keep playing him because that is the only way he can improve.”
Why Wirtz’s improvement matters for Liverpool v Man City
The timing of this upturn matters because Manchester City are exactly the type of opponent who punish you if your creative hub is drifting in and out of games.
Opta’s wider preview has Liverpool as slight favourites at Anfield, giving us a 43% chance of winning compared to Manchester City’s 30.3%, with the draw at 26.7%, and that becomes more realistic if Wirtz continues to turn possession into high-value actions near goal.
There is also a wider sense that Liverpool’s attack is regaining a familiar identity, and Pat Nevin’s praise captures the “before and after” of Wirtz’s settling-in period.
Nevin wrote: “Wirtz is showing that he is perfectly capable of being the main man and maybe even reaching the stellar levels of a player like Kevin de Bruyne.”
Nevin’s point is not that Wirtz is already there, but that Liverpool are now seeing the imagination and authority that defined his best work in Germany.
If Sunday becomes another tight game decided by small moments, having the Germany international who is finally producing decisive actions regularly can shift the balance, especially with Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike continuing to develop an understanding that looks more natural with every week.
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