Arne Slot has said Florian Wirtz must reach the standards set by Mohamed Salah to realise Liverpool\u2019s \u00adexpectations of their new record signing.<\/p>\n
Wirtz will make his Premier League debut when the champions open<\/a> the season at home to Bournemouth on Friday. Slot said the Germany international\u2019s \u201cadjustment went better than expected, and we already expected a lot\u201d, but admitted a more accurate gauge would take time.<\/p>\n Liverpool consider the 22-year-old a transformative signing in the mould of Virgil van Dijk and Alisson. Their head coach believes Wirtz can have a similar impact by following the example of Salah, who continues to set the standards at Liverpool and has scored nine goals in seven opening-day fixtures, a Premier League<\/a> record.<\/p>\n Slot was asked whether Wirtz was a signing to take Liverpool<\/a> to the next level. \u201cThat is something I can only answer in the upcoming years,\u201d he said. \u201c\u00adEverything we expect is very positive, but between expecting and realising something is different.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy are Messi and Ronaldo and Mo so highly regarded? Because they are always fit. Every single game they are fit and that is something that \u00adFlorian first has to show in a league like ours. If he is able to stay fit then our fans will see great moments.\u201d<\/p>\n Liverpool paid a club record \u00a3100m to sign the attacking midfielder from Bayer Leverkusen and he could cost a British record \u00a3116m with add-ons. Slot, however, denies Wirtz is a statement signing by the club, who beat Bayern Munich and Manchester City to his signature.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cLiverpool have done this before,\u201d he said. \u201cWith Alisson Becker we spent so much money, with Virgil we spent so much money, and with inflation I think it is the [level of] Liverpool signing. We mainly make these signings. But we also sell players. If we make these signings, we also have to sell players.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is a different profile to what we have. That is what we wanted \u2013 to bring a different profile in rather than adding something that we already had. It is very positive that we could bring in such a highly regarded player, but Liverpool has always been able to bring in these kinds of\u00a0players.\u201d<\/p>\n Liverpool\u2019s summer spending will pass the \u00a3300m mark when the 18-year-old defender Giovanni Leoni joins from Parma for an initial \u00a326m. The club also want to add Marc Gu\u00e9hi and Alexander Isak.<\/p>\n On a summer of change at Anfield, Slot said: \u201cI would have preferred Trent [Alexander-Arnold] to stay,<\/a> but unfortunately he didn\u2019t. Then you have to replace him. Then you have situations like Caoimh\u00edn Kelleher<\/a> and Jarell Quansah. It is always hard for a player to have two or three seasons like this [not being a regular] in a row and if a player is not able to do this mentally then it is best to split ways and you have to replace.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Lu\u00eds Diaz and Darwin N\u00fa\u00f1ez situations are quite clear so then you have to replace. I think we did that really well. From the options we could get we got all the ones we would like to bring in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arne Slot has said Florian Wirtz must reach the standards set by Mohamed Salah to realise Liverpool\u2019s \u00adexpectations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,4884,179,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-345035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-liverpool","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115029623680261831","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}