Statistics can flatter a player long after the finer details of a match have been forgotten, and Florian Wirtz provided a clear example on Saturday. A single eye-catching number suggested a towering display, but the reality was more complicated than that.<\/p>\n
Wirtz did not produce the kind of performance that the raw data seemed to imply. He was useful rather than devastating, and his influence only grew after Yehor Yarmoliuk was sent off just before half-time. Even then, much of the credit attached to Wirtz came from a statistic that deserves a closer inspection.<\/p>\n
For much of the game, the Liverpool No. 7 was asked to probe a compact Brentford defence. He drifted into the right halfspace, looking for gaps, but too often his contributions became sideways or backward passes that led to speculative efforts. That pattern defined many of the chances he was credited with creating.<\/p>\n
One of the most striking details was that several of those chances came from corners, a reminder of Liverpool\u2019s wider set-piece problems this season. They remain one of only four Premier League sides yet to score from a set piece, despite having collected 18 last season under Arne Slot.<\/p>\n
There was still merit in Wirtz\u2019s play. He showed neat touch and awareness in the move that led to V\u00edctor Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s equaliser, helping move the ball into a dangerous area before Mu\u00f1oz finished. It was not a straightforward assist in the purest sense, but it did matter at a time when Liverpool were still behind and struggling to break the rhythm of the match.<\/p>\n
Wirtz\u2019s official return from the game is his latest reminder of how deceptive modern numbers can be. His 11th assist since joining Liverpool last summer has him second only to Manchester City\u2019s Rayan Cherki for open play assists among Premier League players over the same period, yet the wider picture still asks more questions than it answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wirtz\u2019s headline numbers looked huge, but the match told a more nuanced story altogether today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21814,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[728,175],"tags":[1836,1162],"class_list":["post-21815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brentford","category-liverpool","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}