Given Wirtz’s nine-figure fee, Liverpool fans were certainly entitled to expect more than 15 direct goal involvements from a player who had racked up more than double that figure in his final season at Bayer Leverkusen.
While there were promising performances against the likes of Newcastle, he certainly didn’t make anything like the same impact at Anfield as fellow No.10 Rayan Cherki did at the Etihad, which reflected poorly on Wirtz, given the Frenchman had been of interest to Liverpool before being signed by Manchester City for just £34m ($45m).
However, there were multiple mitigating circumstances, with the main one being that Liverpool’s campaign was a calamity from start to finish. Wirtz joined a title-winning team tipped to challenge for the Champions League – and yet after being easily beaten by Paris Saint-Germain in the quarter-finals, the Reds only managed to qualify for next year’s competition on the final day of the Premier League season.
