\t\t\t\t\t1<\/p>\n
German phenom Florian Wirtz continues to fail to get on the scoresheet for Liverpool. The 22-year-old also recorded neither a goal nor an assist in last night\u2019s German national team 4-0 win over Luxembourg. Julian Nagelsmann nevertheless defended one of his most talented charges in his post match comments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Nagelsmann, and indeed many football nerds, Wirtz\u2019s performance thus far at the Premier League champions has been severely underrated. Irrespective of which statistics aggregator one turns to, Wirtz still possesses decent expected goals (xG) and expected assist (xA) totals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not entirely certain which source Nagelsmann drew upon when speaking on Wirtz last night, but one assumes that the ultra-modern \u201cmetric-centric\u201d footballing guru<\/a> and his coaching staff did their research with regard to Wirtz\u2019s sluggish Premier League start.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe is still the player who creates the most chances in the Premier League,\u201d Nagelsman remarked last night at the post-match press conference. \u201cIf the player doesn\u2019t convert the chances, it\u2019s bad for his statistics. But that\u2019s not even one third of the truth.<\/p>\n \u201cFlo is a player who knows what he can do and how things work in football,\u201d Nagelsmann continued. \u201cHe had to work hard to get where he is. We know how things work: as soon as he scores three goals, he\u2019ll be the king of all summer transfers. Right now, he\u2019s an expensive addition, but that doesn\u2019t weigh on him.\u201d<\/p>\n Nagelsmann went on to discuss the specifics of Wirtz\u2019s performance last night. Wirtz \u2013 like he did against Northern Ireland in September<\/a> \u2013 nearly converted a free-kick. A 62nd-minute dead ball effort from Wirtz struck the post. Fine passes to Leon Goretzka (16th) and Nick Woltemade (33rd) also deserved assists.<\/p>\n \u201cHe did well and tried a lot,\u201d Nagelsmann said of Wirtz\u2019s overall game. \u201cHe was unlucky in a few situations, but can\u2019t be blamed for that.\u201c<\/p>\n Prior to kick-off in Sinsheim last night, Wirtz was awarded a trophy commemorating his selection as Kicker Magazine\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cFootballer of the Year\u201c. Wirtz edged out Bayern attacking sensation Michael Olise and his fellow new Premier League arrival Woltemade to earn the award.\u00a0<\/p>\n GGFN<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Peter Weis<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1 German phenom Florian Wirtz continues to fail to get on the scoresheet for Liverpool. The 22-year-old also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-491156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491156","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=491156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}