Florian Wirtz's Premier League Future in Doubt: Jamie Carragher's Concerns
Jamie Carragher has cast serious doubt over whether Florian Wirtz can ever truly dominate the Premier League, questioning if Liverpool’s £115 million signing has the “tools to overcome the physical challenge” of English football.
Wirtz arrived at Anfield from Bayer Leverkusen last summer as the headline act of an ambitious rebuild. He was supposed to be the new conductor of Liverpool’s attack. Instead, he became a symbol of a season that unravelled.
Liverpool’s title defence collapsed, Arne Slot departed at the end of the campaign, and the club limped to a fifth-placed finish, 25 points adrift of champions Arsenal. In the middle of it all, Wirtz flickered rather than burned.
He showed touches of class, the odd clever pass, glimpses of the vision that made him one of Europe’s most coveted young playmakers. But he never put together a sustained run of form. For a £115m signing, “neat and tidy” was never going to be enough.
For Carragher, writing in his Telegraph column, the questions are now impossible to ignore.
“The jury is out on whether he possesses the tools to overcome the physical challenge. I must admit, I have my doubts,”
he said, laying bare his concern that Wirtz’s game may not translate to the relentless intensity of the Premier League.
When Liverpool secured the German international, the expectation inside Anfield was clear: Wirtz would arrive and dominate games in the way Kevin De Bruyne has done for Manchester City. That comparison, Carragher argues, has quickly fallen apart.
Wirtz, he notes, does not have De Bruyne’s athleticism, nor his explosive running or shooting power. At his best so far, Carragher says, the 23-year-old has looked more like a “useful squad addition for about £40m” than a true “game-changer who cost £115m”.
The pressure around the midfielder is only intensifying. Carragher calls the coming campaign a “make-or-break season” for Wirtz, and the tactical context does him no favours either.
Last season, as defensive problems mounted, Slot gradually abandoned some of his attacking ideals. Wirtz, recruited as a central attacking midfielder, found himself shunted to the left wing as Liverpool sought greater balance. He never looked fully at home there, and the experiment only added to the sense of an ill-fitting piece in a misfiring system.
Carragher fears a repeat under Andoni Iraola if Liverpool again struggle to keep the back door shut.
“If Wirtz does not have the desired impact in the early games this season, it is not difficult to foresee history repeating itself and Iraola realising he must compromise attacking romanticism for pragmatism,”
he wrote, warning that the new manager’s principles could quickly collide with Premier League reality.
That is especially relevant given Iraola’s preference for “out-and-out wingers”. If he sticks to that template, Wirtz risks either being pushed wide again or pushed out of the XI altogether. “Such circumstances would raise serious doubts about Wirtz’s future,” Carragher added.
The German was part of what looked, on paper, like a statement summer window. Liverpool also brought in Alexander Isak, Hugo Ekitike, Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong. Only Ekitike truly imposed himself. The rest, Wirtz included, watched as Arsenal streaked away and Liverpool’s season drifted.
Now comes the reset.
Liverpool open the 2026/27 Premier League campaign away at Newcastle United, at St James’ Park, on Sunday 23 August, 4.30pm kick-off. Under a new manager, with old scars still visible, Wirtz walks into that game knowing one thing: the debate around his suitability for this league will not fade on its own.
He has to silence it. On the pitch, and fast.
