When it comes to Florian Wirtz’s gradual integration at Liverpool, Germany national team manager Julian Nagelsmann shifted the blame onto his wayward teammates.
Wirtz arrived at Liverpool in June as the most expensive signing in the club’s history. That status was subsequently stolen by Alexander Isak, yet neither big-money recruit has hit the ground running on Merseyside.
Unlike Isak, Wirtz is yet to score a goal for his new employers. The former Bundesliga Player of the Year is also waiting for his first Premier League assist. However, as Nagelsmann was at pains to point out, Wirtz needs his teammates to finish off those chances to break his assist duck.
“Maybe Liverpool could also help him out by scoring some of the chances he creates,” Nagelsmann sniffed this week. “That would be one idea because he does create a few chances. It is just that they somehow do not like to shoot the ball in from those chances. That is part of the truth.”
Wirtz has created 16 chances in 11 Premier League appearances this season. Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka is the only player in England’s top flight to have racked up more key passes (17) without registering a single assist this season.
Liverpool’s Arne Slot has made the same argument as Nagelsmann, specifically citing several opportunities which Wirtz has carved open for Salah only to see the Egyptian forward clank a shot off the post.
Yet, this argument ignores the quality of the chances Wirtz is responsible for. Expected assists (xA) tallies up the xG of the shots created by a player to provide an estimate of how many goals the average finisher would be expected to score based on these exact opportunities. Based on this metric, Wirtz should really only have provided one assist, suggesting that he is a high volume (rather than high calibre) creator.
When considering a player’s average xA created over the current campaign, Wirtz is being outperformed by four of his teammates. Across the wider Premier League, Liverpool’s £116 million ($152.4 million) summer recruit is creating chances of lower quality than Brentford centre back Kristoffer Ajer.
