Wirtz, Carragher and the 120-million-pound question: Is Liverpool wasting him or being wasted?

I lingered in the broadcast corridor at Vitality Stadium after Bournemouth's 1-0 defeat to Liverpool. Jamie Carragher walked out, headphones in hand, face unreadable. A British colleague asked him: "What do you make of Wirtz?" Carragher paused for exactly three seconds. Long enough for me to remember the summer of 2026 in Kaliningrad, when I mispronounced Granit Xhaka's name three times in front of thousands of Swiss fans. I learned that in football, the easiest thing is to speak; the hardest is to see correctly. And Carragher replied: "He passes tidily, he escapes pressure well. But frankly – nothing happens. For that price, Liverpool deserve more from him."

That was a perfect opening. I looked around: reporters were taking notes, cameras were rolling. The rhythm of feet on grass does not lie, but words spoken after a match often reveal even more. Stand long enough on the touchline, and you will see everything. At that moment, I had been standing on it for thirty years.

Two weeks earlier, Liverpool under Arne Slot – the successor to Jurgen Klopp, and I must clarify this because a wire report I received mistakenly said "Iraola will decide Wirtz's fate," forcing me to verify everything from scratch – were in what pundits called "winning ugly." They beat Bournemouth 1-0 through a Mohamed Salah moment. They beat Burnley with a late Salah penalty. To outsiders, that was six valuable points. But to those who watch every movement closely, Liverpool had lost the fluency of a high-pressing collective.

At the centre of it all is Florian Wirtz – the £120m signing from Bayer Leverkusen. In the first six league rounds, Wirtz played as the No. 10, alongside Szoboszlai and Gravenberch in midfield. His numbers: no goals, no assists in the Premier League. The wire report I received – and I must warn you that I checked it three times because it contained internal contradictions about personnel – claimed Carragher was not merely criticising form; he was questioning value: "The price tag for this type of player should be half of what Liverpool paid."

I asked myself: can a heated remark on Sky Sports really alter the trajectory of a big club? History says yes. But before answering, I needed to look inside the team. I followed Sichuan Jiuniu in China's second division for two years to write what I wrote – not from press conferences, but from 9 a.m. training sessions in Chengdu fog. My rule: to understand a player, watch how he stands on the training pitch when no one is observing. With Wirtz, I did not have that privilege. But I had match footage of the last three games, and tactical notes from a friend who works as a video analyst at a Premier League club.

The question Carragher raised is not new. But he was the first to say it on national television. After reviewing the three matches, I believe Carragher is right about the symptom but may be wrong about the cause. The naked eye sees Wirtz holding the ball a lot, passing safely, rarely playing the decisive final ball. Preliminary data I collected – though lacking specific xG, xA, PPDA – shows the same: Wirtz keeps the rhythm but does not create breakthroughs. There are two readings. First: Wirtz is underperforming, like any young player arriving in a league tougher than the Bundesliga. Second: the No. 10 role in Slot's system does not unlock his greatest strength – penetrating from midfield into the box when space appears behind the defence.

The problem is not whether Wirtz has talent, but that Liverpool have asked him to play a role he never played in a system not redesigned for that role. Carragher leans toward a harsher reading: Wirtz simply "has not got the numbers." In a football market where everything is converted into xG, his statement sounds like a verdict. But what struck me more was his follow-up: "If Wirtz plays No. 10, Szoboszlai has to play central midfield. And I don't think he can play there." That is the key point. It turns a debate about one player into a debate about structure.

In the current Liverpool, Szoboszlai is the most complete midfielder – he can accelerate, press, and score from deep. When he is pushed back to play alongside Gravenberch, Liverpool lose penetration through the centre and become entirely dependent on the flanks. As for Gravenberch? This is the knot few discuss. A five-year contract with "massive" wages was signed with the expectation that he and Szoboszlai would be the future of Liverpool's midfield. Yet this season, Gravenberch does not play regularly. A big contract was approved based on future expectations, but in the present, he sits on the bench while the team struggles in important matches. This reveals a misalignment between the recruitment department and the coaching staff – something outsiders do not see on television.

Let me use an image familiar to football people: a team is not a car whose parts can be swapped individually. When you put a high-power engine into a chassis not designed for it, the whole car shakes. Wirtz is not a bad player. He is a piece causing imbalance. And when Carragher says "he has no numbers," he is complaining about the result of that imbalance, not the quality of the piece.

I remember the article I spent three weeks producing in Chengdu, about 18 clever off-ball movements by midfielder Liu Chao in a training session. That day: no goals, no assists, no shots on target. Yet the article got 50,000 reads – seven times my previous print record. Because I told the inside story: those movements stretched the opponent's defence and created space for teammates – something no statistic captures. I am not saying Wirtz is doing the same. I am saying: a view that lacks tactical context is an incomplete view.

When I worked at the Newark Advertiser in 2026, my editor taught me that sports news never stands alone; it always stands next to a calendar. For Liverpool, the calendar from mid-October to Christmas is a suspended sentence: Manchester City at home, then Brentford, Brighton, Arsenal; in the Champions League, LASK and Villarreal; in the Carabao Cup, Chelsea. Seven or eight matches in six weeks. In that context, the question "should Wirtz start?" almost answers itself: he will start, not because he deserves it, but because rotation is necessary. A £120m player on the bench throughout the festive period is a waste of wages no sporting director wants to explain. This "need to use him" creates a paradox: the coaching staff cannot admit Wirtz is a mistake, so they will keep playing him – and keep being criticised.

Carragher once said: "Players like this at mid-table clubs – Dewsbury-Hall, Gibbs-White, Buendia – score every three or four weeks. Wirtz does not do that." It sounds logical, but it misses a big detail: Dewsbury-Hall, Gibbs-White and Buendia are not pure playmaker No. 10s; they are free-roaming attacking midfielders whose systems are built around them receiving the ball in dangerous space. Wirtz is being confined to a role he never played at Leverkusen, where he operated as a free left-sided attacker, not squeezed between two centre-backs. Comparing their scoring frequency without comparing systems is a false comparison. It is like criticising a pianist for not playing the drums just because both are music.

I watched Wirtz play best at Leverkusen during their unbeaten season – he never stood still waiting for the ball. He constantly drifted to the left wing, overlapping with full-back Grimaldo, creating space for the striker. Liverpool have no Grimaldo. Liverpool have a high-pressing system that needs a No. 10 to control tempo, not an off-ball runner like he once was. If Slot truly wants to unlock Wirtz, he needs to change the attacking structure – not the player. And that is what Carragher, despite his intelligence, did not say, or did not want to say, because the story "he should be benched" sells more than the story "the system must be redesigned."

Finally, I want to address something television debates rarely touch: the financial side. £120m is a large number, but it is paid as a transfer fee, amortised over the contract length – usually five years. That means Liverpool record only about £24m per year in costs, less than the wages of many top Premier League stars. So Carragher's "should be half the price" comment is not strictly true in accounting terms – but it is not entirely false either when viewed through efficiency. A £60m player scoring 12 goals per season is still more valuable than a £120m player scoring 4 goals per season, regardless of how many chances he creates for teammates. Value in modern football is measured by goals and trophies, not by the beauty of passes.

But if you feel offended on Wirtz's behalf, the Gravenberch story is a warning. A five-year contract with "massive" wages – according to the wire report I received – was signed before he proved his worth, and now it is becoming a burden. Every week Gravenberch sits on the bench, the value of that contract erodes. That is what football people call a deadweight contract. And if Liverpool are careless, Wirtz will become the second deadweight contract in 12 months. Then the question is not just whether Carragher is right, but where Liverpool's leadership went wrong – in recruitment or in usage.

Let me now reverse the problem. All the criticism aimed at Wirtz – "flop," "£120m down the drain," "not suited to the Premier League" – shares an assumption: that Liverpool bought Wirtz to be a classic No. 10 who scores and assists. But if you look at how Slot operated last season, he has no concept of a traditional "No. 10." He uses two wide No. 8s and one deeper player to press – the kind of player like Szoboszlai or Curtis Jones. When Liverpool spent £120m on Wirtz, they sent an expensive signal: we want a difference-maker. But they forgot to change the system around him.

The Premier League's high-pressing teams – from Arsenal to Manchester City – do not leave space behind midfield for a No. 10 to turn comfortably. They squeeze space in ways the Bundesliga rarely does. When Wirtz receives the ball in his own half, he passes sideways. When he receives it in the opponent's half, he is surrounded by two or three players. Result: a talented player looks invisible. Carragher understands this, but he speaks carefully. "He is not a player I dislike. I am just talking about numbers." That is a clever dodge, enough to avoid being accused of bullying a young player, while still pushing Liverpool into a corner where they must make a decision.

Here is an uncomfortable truth that analysts rarely admit: Liverpool are top of the table, regardless of their performances. 1-0 wins, late winning goals – they may not be pretty, but they bring points. Elite football runs on points, and every "crisis" originates from not having points. When a team is still winning yet is considered to be in crisis, the problem is that analysts are using narrative to replace results. Carragher once said of Arsenal: "They play beautiful football, but they don't win titles with it." Now he is applying the reverse logic to Wirtz: "He creates nothing, even though the team keeps winning." The difference lies in timing. Wenger's Arsenal were criticised for failing to convert beauty into trophies. Slot's Liverpool are being criticised for failing to convert points into persuasion. Both are stories, but the latter is more dangerous because it directly attacks the value of a human being – the youngest, most expensive player in the squad.

I am writing these lines from a small coffee shop in Chengdu. It is 3 a.m. and I cannot sleep. I think of the Anfield stands – where fans can sing a player's name and also fall into cold silence when that player has a bad day. Empty stadium, full hearts – in 2026, I stood with 1,257 Jiuniu fans in front of Longquanyi Stadium, holding banners to encourage the team when they went three months unpaid. That day I understood why I sit here. Football is not just match results. Football is the story of people who dare to believe in a collective, even when that collective makes mistakes. Wirtz has done nothing to offend Liverpool fans. He has simply not scored. And for a young player, the difference between "not yet scoring" and "not worthy" is an ocean.

The match against Manchester City in mid-October, right after the international break, is not just a test for Wirtz. It is where Liverpool reveal their philosophy: they spent £120m on a player, but do they dare let that player play in the biggest match of the season? If Slot benches Wirtz, he is admitting that the most expensive signing in club history is an immediate mistake – something no manager wants to admit. If he starts Wirtz, he must face pressure from Carragher and part of the Anfield crowd. But there is a third possibility, and it makes me optimistic. During the international break, I read that Wirtz joined the German national team. The original wire said Germany were managed by Jurgen Klopp – a detail that did not match what I know, so I called two European colleagues to verify. Both said: the Wirtz story at Liverpool is real, the Carragher debate is real, but the Germany detail needs checking. That is a reminder that in the age of misinformation, our job is not to publish the fastest information, but to slow down and say it most accurately. Three mispronunciations of Xhaka taught me to read a person before writing – and three verifications of a wire report taught me to read the whole system before trusting a name.

Wirtz is still only 22. He has a family, an agent, and a talent proven at Leverkusen. European football is full of players labelled "flops" at 22 who became legends at 27. Conversely, there are players hyped too early who disappear forever. So the real question here is not "Is Wirtz worth £120m?" The real question is: "Was Liverpool ready for a player like Wirtz?" If the answer is no, then it is not Wirtz's fault. It is the fault of those who decided to spend £120m on a rough diamond while forgetting that a diamond needs a proper setting.

When the match against Manchester City begins, let us look at the starting lineup before listening to the commentary. Let us see where Wirtz stands on the pitch, how he moves in the first five minutes, whether he dares to turn and receive the ball among three blue shirts. The rhythm of feet on grass does not lie. Just stand long enough on the touchline, and we will see everything. I will still be standing there – among the crowd, among thousands of people – to record what Wirtz's feet say, rather than what others say about his feet.