Florian Wirtz has endured a slow opening period at Liverpool, and both Arne Slot and Xabi Alonso have responded by urging patience. The 22-year-old has zero goals and just three assists through 14 appearances for Liverpool and is still seeking his first Premier League goal contribution.<\/p>\n
Slot offered a clear defence of his high-profile signing ahead of Liverpool\u2019s meeting with Real Madrid. “I\u2019ve said this quite a lot, not as an excuse but just how it is; many times we have to play three games in seven days with only two days\u2019 rest in between. For a player who comes from a different league, which is a very good league by the way, nine out of 10 people would agree the Premier League is a bit more intense in all the games.” He added perspective on Wirtz\u2019s early performances: “For me, he brought exactly what we expected, a player who created a lot for the team. He will have his goals but I don\u2019t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that if you\u2019re 22 or 23 and come to a different league that you might need some time to adjust to that intensity if you play every three days,” Slot said.<\/p>\n
Slot also drew a comparison with how long it took Ryan Gravenberch to adjust to the intensity of the English top flight before becoming a key figure in Liverpool\u2019s 2024\u201325 title-winning campaign.<\/p>\n
Alonso, who helped develop Wirtz at Bayer Leverkusen, echoed the call for time and confidence. “I have no doubts. It is just a matter of time. It is a big change for him to come to Liverpool after so many years in Germany, he\u2019s been there all his life.<\/p>\n
“He is a really special player. He has quality and personality and he\u2019s competitive. It has happened with great players in the Premier League before and I\u2019ve no doubts with Flo.<\/p>\n
“He is very special and probably one of the reasons I\u2019m here now so I\u2019m very grateful to Flo. Hopefully not [against Real Madrid] but I\u2019ve no doubt he will show his quality and class,” Alonso finished.<\/p>\n
Wirtz arrived from Bayer Leverkusen, where he spent his entire career and helped that club to its first-ever league title in 2023\u201324. Both coaches emphasised adaptation to Premier League intensity as the central factor in his early form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot and Alonso insist Florian Wirtz will adapt; he has zero goals, three assists in 14 games. soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1081,299,1019],"class_list":["post-4258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-adaptation","tag-arne-slot","tag-creative-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4258","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=4258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}