REVEALED: Why Florian Wirtz may actually not be a good signing for Liverpool

The general consensus is that Florian Wirtz is not only an excellent footballer and brilliant signing for Liverpool but that he could be the guy to lift Arne Slot’s side to a level so superior to their rivals as to usher in a sustained period of dominance in the Premier League.

We don’t disagree, and suspect there will be at most one or two F365 contrarians going against Liverpool when we come to predict the title winners in a couple of months’ time thanks in large part to his imminent arrival from Bayer Leverkusen.

But we thought it prudent to play devil’s advocate as everyone seems so sure that Wirtz will be a roaring success. Here are five reasons why he may actually not be a good signing for Liverpool.

Dominik Szoboszlai and Mohamed Salah
While Szoboszlai has impressed this season, it’s been largely his off-ball energy in and out of possession rather than his quality with the ball at his feet that has made him a key part of Slot’s title-winning side. “Vitally important,” according to Jamie Carragher, who wonders whether the Hungary international may drop deeper and retain his spot in the starting XI.

But if – as we suspect – Slot will make a straight choice between Wirtz and Szoboszlai to play ahead of Alexis Mac Allister and Ryan Gravenberch in his midfield three, Wirtz is going to win that battle nine times out of ten.

Wirtz outstrips Szoboszlai in almost every attacking and creation metric going, while also being similarly renowned for his pressing and work ethic out of possession. But we wonder how Mohammed Salah might feel about a key ally being dropped to accommodate the new signing.

“We are really close to each other. Actually it’s hard to explain how it feels to play alongside him,” Szoboszlai said last month when asked about his relationship with Salah.

They assisted each other in the 2-0 win over Manchester City in February and Szoboszlai got more Premier League assists (5) for Salah than any other Liverpool player while operating in the inside-right position next to the Egyptian, with his underlapping runs to stretch the defence crucial in opening up space for Salah to come inside and score His Goal time and again.

Wirtz typically plays and is best as a left-sided attacking midfielder, which offers Slot intriguing scope to play both him and Szoboszlai against lesser opposition, but also means that against top teams, when it will likely be one or the other, Salah may not only miss Szoboszlai, but no-one close to him on the right.

While that makes sense – if anyone in the Liverpool team doesn’t need help it’s surely Salah – but there is a pretty strong case to be made after a 57 G/A season that Salah’s boat is the one to avoid rocking.

READ MORE: Florian Wirtz could be a ‘lightweight short-arse getting bullied every week’

The price tag
The inadequacy of the majority of the most expensive Premier League signings of all time can in the main be explained away by those players signing for a post-Sir Alex Ferguson-era Manchester United. Nobody mentioning Declan Rice’s £100m price tag in the last couple of years other than in a context of £100m being what brilliant footballers cost proves that it’s perfectly possible for huge transfer fees to be rendered inconsequential through top performances.

But Rice hit the ground running at Arsenal and has steadily improved on his already very high level to the point where he’s scoring incredible free-kicks against the Champions League holders. And make no mistake, not a lot less than that would have seen rival fans goading the Gunners, pundits questioning the signing and Rice labelled a flop.

Liverpool are expected to make a third bid for Wirtz after their £109m bid was rejected by Leverkusen, meaning whatever he arrives for will be a British-record transfer fee. The pressure will be huge and the 22-year-old is in the unfavourable position of being a guy renowned for scoring and assisting. His value to Liverpool will be far more easily measured than Moises Caicedo’s at Chelsea, for example, and he was one of the key chokers as a member of the ‘Blue billion-pound bottle jobs’ six months after his £100m move from Brighton.

Caicedo has done remarkably well to come back from that unfair knee-jerk put-down, but you need only look at Antony’s teary admission over his struggles at Manchester United to see just how damaging a huge transfer fee can be to a young footballer.

QUIZ: Wirtz next? Name the 19 Liverpool signings from Bundesliga since 2000…

Record signings
Liverpool tend to get big-money signings right. Most would argue seven of their top ten most costly additions have been worth the outlay. And holding the seat of most expensive as all – as Wirtz is about to be by some distance – has typically been a feather in the cap Reds players have worn while achieving great things.

Assuming Darwin Nunez hasn’t activated enough add-ons after his £64m move from Benfica to surpass the £75m paid to Southampton for Virgil van Dijk all the way back in January 2018, Liverpool’s record transfer progression is up there with the very best in the Premier League; without Andy Carroll squeezing between Luis Suarez and Salah, even Manchester City’s impressive quintet wouldn’t deny them supremacy.

But Wirtz will also be breaking the British transfer record in joining Liverpool, which is a less encouraging harbinger, with Rio Ferdinand’s £29.1m move to Manchester United from Leeds the last unquestionable Premier League record transfer success story.

Enzo Fernandez (Benfica to Chelsea, £106.8m), Jack Grealish (Aston Villa to Man City, £100m), Paul Pogba (Juventus to Man Utd, £89m), Fernando Torres (Liverpool to Chelsea, £50m), Robinho (Real Madrid to Man City, £32.5m) and Andriy Shevchenko (AC Milan to Chelsea, £30.6m) is not a merry band Wirtz will want to join.

Flat-track bully
57 goals and 65 assists in 197 appearances for Bayer Leverkusen is very good going. A goal contribution every 117 minutes is about as good as it gets for a playmaker unless you’re Kevin De Bruyne (110), and Wirtz being just 22 makes his record a) particularly extraordinary, and b) a reasonable indicator of a career to rival that of the very best creators in Premier League history.

But Wirtz will need to improve his output in the big games against the biggest teams to be held in such esteemed company.

He’s managed just one goal and one assist in 10 games against Bayern Munich; his Champions League goals this season came against Feyenoord, RB Leipzig (2), Sparta Prague (2) and Brest, with his only assist coming in the spanking of Leipzig, but he drew blanks against Milan, Bayern, Atletico Madrid, Inter and in his anonymous display vs his soon-to-be new employers.

He also failed to score or assist in the two-legged Europa League quarter-final against West Ham last season, his only other games against Premier League opposition.

He’s not Alexander Isak
Amid interest in Hugo Ekitike and Benjamin Sesko among other top strikers this summer, a report on Wednesday claimed Isak remains Arne Slot’s ‘dream’ No.9 signing. Of course he is.

Frankfurt want £84m for Ekitike and RB Leipzig want £92m for Sesko, who scored 15 and 13 goals respectively in the Bundesliga this season. Signing Isak would likely require Liverpool to break the British-record transfer twice in the same summer, but that extra outlay buys Liverpool close to a guarantee of goals after the Newcastle star found the net 22 times in the Premier League last season.

We have no idea how far Liverpool’s transfer budget can stretch this summer. They may well have the extraordinary funds required to sign Wirtz and Isak, along with Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez and others.

But we wonder whether they should have considered the downgrade to any Isak alternative compared to the difference between Wirtz and Szoboszlai, or an £80m playmaker they could have signed instead of the Leverkusen man, which would have freed up extra funds to go all out for the Newcastle striker.