In a struggle to come up with \u201cpositives\u201d surrounding Florian Wirtz grim start to life at Liverpool, former Reds star Steve Nicol has damned the Germany international with faint praise.<\/p>\n
Wirtz is yet to score for Liverpool since his \u00a3100m move from Bayer Leverkusen and has claimed just two assists.<\/p>\n
After the 3-0 defeat to Manchester City on Sunday, Gary Neville claimed he looked like a \u201clittle boy\u201d and Nicol, who made 459 appearances for Liverpool, has scraped the barrel in his bid to find plus points at the start of his Anfield career.<\/p>\n
READ:\u00a0Liverpool outmuscled, outtackled and outrun as 20 per cent drop revealed<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIf we are going to put a positive on Florian Wirtz, I would say that number one, he\u2019s kept his mouth shut. He\u2019s not in the papers talking about how he isn\u2019t playing,\u201d he said on ESPN.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the other thing I would say is when he actually has been on the field, he hasn\u2019t been hiding.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s looking for the ball, he\u2019s not sulking, not walking around with his tail between his legs, he\u2019s actually trying to get involved and do what he does.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just isn\u2019t working right now. But to be fair to him, given how young he is, throw in all the other stuff about the new team and all the rest of it, but he is not hiding and that is really important for the fans, manager and the players around him.\u201d<\/p>\n MORE LIVERPOOL COVERAGE ON F365\u2026 Germany head coach Julian Nagelsmann came to Wirtz\u2019s aid in\u00a0his press conference ahead of World Cup qualifiers against Luxembourg and Slovakia, claiming his teammates are to blame for the playmaker\u2019s inauspicious start to life in the Premier League.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cTo be honest, the whole situation does not make it easy for him either. The whole club itself is not as stable this year as it was last year. It\u2019s much harder to slip into the team now.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look vs City, they were the worse team over the 90 minutes. So it is also difficult for Flo to make any real big impact.<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately, the overall situation is such that he just needs a little more time \u2013 which is normal and you see that with other players, who move to the English Premier League as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Nagelsmann added: \u201cWe all know what he is capable of and it is perfectly normal for a player of his age to go through a bit of a dip in form.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot expect him to perform at the same level for three years straight.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead, we all need to support him a little bit, so that he can clear his head here and then, maybe, Liverpool could also help him out by scoring some of the chances he creates.<\/p>\n \u201cThat 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a struggle to come up with \u201cpositives\u201d surrounding Florian Wirtz grim start to life at Liverpool, former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,2912,163,4884,179,12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-566769","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-florian-wirtz","11":"tag-front-page","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-liverpool","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115540206803323792","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566769","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=566769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ud83d\udc49\u00a0Liverpool fans trying to \u2018retcon\u2019 season expectations is \u2018absolute bullsh*t\u2019<\/a>
\ud83d\udc49\u00a0Liverpool will \u2018drastically improve\u2019 but they might have to drop Wirtz first<\/a>
\ud83d\udc49\u00a0\u2018It\u2019s clear there\u2019s a vendetta against Liverpool\u2019 and other less mental views<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n