While some fans are losing patience waiting for Florian Wirtz to make it click, is it actually Liverpool that need to make it click first?
‘WAITING for it to click’ is something we hear often.
We understand the saying. Still, it carries some vagueness. What constitutes a ‘click’? What defines an ‘it’?
In Liverpool’s case, it stretches to individuals and the collective. A team which is shy in every aspect of its identity cut loose on Wednesday against LASK. We know already that Brentford will be a very different challenge.
Of course, we should appreciate the context of a new coach and a still relatively new team in its assembly. That grace is being given to Andoni Iraola right now, and he’s doing his bit in picking up results.
Yet we yearn for a Northern Star to guide us into the light of what this Liverpool team is and where it’s going.
We need this. We had it in spades when Jürgen Klopp showed us boundless personality from himself and his team. They ran, they fought, and they showed us we could trust them.
This team can fight and run. They can score six goals on a European night. They can salvage something from games they’d have lost last season. But there remains a void of connection. A smidge of distrust.
This team reminds me somewhat of the 2004-05 Liverpool side who had top quality in areas, but so much uncertainty and distrust in others. They were meek and inconsistent domestically but looked liberated on European nights.
We’d probably all deal on another season like that one right now, given how it ended.
The question remains what will the arrival of this Liverpool team ‘clicking’ look like? A Bradley Barcola hat-trick will have been top on the list of many, but there has been a willingness to dismiss Wednesday’s performance on account of the opposition.
And then there’s Florian Wirtz. Clear quality, a willingness to do well, but a sense that it’s just not happening.
It’s impossible not to feel for Wirtz. He wears Liverpool’s famous number seven. He is charged with being the team’s creative fulcrum and, to many, should be able to perform magic tricks and be a matchwinner on demand.
When he turns into a blind alley, comes into his own half just to perform a bounce pass or inexplicably gives away possession, the same people exasperate at him in a manner which has now turned to anger in some parts.
Others are simply now resigned to giving up and writing him off. I’ve found it hard watching him this season, I can’t lie. But my overriding feeling is that he can’t do it on his own.
The one thing Wirtz needs more than anything is movement. He needs Liverpool to be fluid, rotational and to have bodies in front of him.
Too often there aren’t enough options, or it’s too static. This isn’t to blindly defend him, but getting the best out of Wirtz is a group endeavour. It will mean seeing the best of the likes of Barcola, Cody Gakpo, Alexander Isak and, in time, Hugo Ekitike.
This is backed up in numbers. Domestically, Liverpool are one of the worst for creating clear chances at 1.5 per game compared to a league average of 2.5. Put simply, we don’t get into the opposition penalty box enough.
The Reds still have an incredibly young team packed with potential. They’ve got a coach who is doing the right things with so much more to come.
There might be bumps in the road ahead. Saturday won’t make for easy viewing, but we have to buy into the journey otherwise what’s the point?
Florian Wirtz won’t come good on his own, but will improve the more his team does.
We’re waiting for it to click. I’m still not sure exactly what that means.
Maybe that’s the problem.
