Before we get into how we unlock Wirtz, let’s get into why we need to unlock him. Liverpool will spend a lot of time dominating football matches “possession wise” and need inventive problem solvers in the final 3rd to unlock defences and score goals. Florian Wirtz is one of the best at doing this. He sees pictures of what’s going to happen better than anyone else. Putting clever players around him, Alexander Isak/Hugo Ekitike/Bradley Barcola when he’s seeing these pictures will get them scoring goals.
To do this, we need Wirtz receiving the ball, between their lines, inside the block. The pictures he sees here have the highest impact potential. This needs vertical progression from deep. He should not be coming deep to pick the ball up.
The only 2 players who can do this in our squad today are Trey Nyoni & Alexis Mac Allister. Nyoni’s got everything to do this for years to come but we cannot trust an 18 year old to play 40 games at a high level. Mac Allister can also do this deep progression but he will struggle with large space defending needed for that role, which would mean the 8 staying a bit behind and that will affect our pressing structure.
Our best midfield 2 will be Nyoni & Dominik Szoboszlai, we can only use Mac Allister when we are certain of dominating games. I would love to see Stefan Bajcetic in that role. Before his injury troubles, he would have been perfect.
I really don’t think Ryan Gravenberch + Szoboszlai work out as a 2, I think Iraola is doing this for OOP structure, they’re the 2 best defensively for 90 mins but there’s not enough progression to unlock Wirtz and we’ll be a team without any patterns of play.