Florian Wirtz admitted relief after finally scoring his first Liverpool goal, the second in a narrow 2-1 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers at Anfield. The goal followed a period of adjustment to the Premier League, where the 22-year-old has found the pace and physicality challenging and has not yet been able to dictate play as he did in Germany.<\/p>\n
Manager Arne Slot tried Wirtz on the left in search of impact, before briefly dropping him when early form failed to improve. A gradual uptick in performances over recent fixtures culminated in Wirtz breaking his duck against the league\u2019s bottom side. His strike arrived just 89 seconds after Ryan Gravenberch had opened the scoring, putting the champions 2-0 up, although Wolves fought back and made Liverpool work for the three points. The win extended Liverpool\u2019s unbeaten run in the Premier League to six games, a recovery from a sequence that saw the club lose six of seven between late-September and November.<\/p>\n
On the pitch after the match Wirtz reflected on the moment and his expectations. \u201cIt was very nice, the feeling on the pitch with the fans around,\u201d Wirtz said in a postmatch interview. \u201cI was very happy and I am still, I like it. I was confident that I would score one day but of course I wanted to start scoring and assisting earlier. It was like this, I have to accept it, but I just knew it will come.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also urged his teammates to address a dip after the interval. \u201cWe played a brilliant first half and I think everyone was working really hard,\u201d he continued of Liverpool\u2019s overall display. \u201cThen in the second half, the last 25 minutes we made it ourselves difficult. I cannot explain why but we have to talk about this at training. We have to change this.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the way we want to do it. We want to be there, on top of the table. It\u2019s not been easy start but in the last games we’re doing better and better. We\u2019re trying to win every game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot was upbeat about Wirtz\u2019s progression and his growing adaptation to English football. \u201cI think I\u2019m quite sure it was a relief for him, this I could see after his reaction after he scored the goal\u2014and the same I saw with his teammates,\u201d Slot said in his postmatch press conference. \u201cI think they were really happy for him scoring his first goal because in football\u2014rightly so, maybe\u2014we mainly get judged on results and individuals mainly get judged on goals and assists. Sometimes we tend to forget what else there is to do during a game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s had multiple good games for us but I also feel he gets better and better every single game he is playing for us. He gets fitter and fitter and was getting closer and closer to his first goal. Then it was not a surprise to me that he scored one today, but he would probably be the first one to understand that one goal is not enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe will score many more goals for us than only this one, but I also liked his performance during large parts of the game today. I think he was special in a lot of moments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wirtz finally scored for Liverpool, a winner in a 2-1 win, but he urged the team to fix late issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1024,172,783],"tags":[1081,195,299],"class_list":["post-5444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool-fc","category-epl","category-wolverhampton-wanderers","tag-adaptation","tag-alexander-isak","tag-arne-slot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5444","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=5444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}