Jamie Carragher and Daniel Sturridge were briefly teammates at Liverpool. On Sunday, after a 3-0 home defeat to Manchester City, they had the kind of row about Florian Wirtz that you normally only hear in a pub at closing time, and it was one of the better bits of television of the weekend.
Sky Sports billed it as a debate over whether Wirtz’s lack of goals and assists is down to him playing in an unfamiliar position. That undersells it. Quotes below are from a full transcript published by Brit Brief.
How it went
Carragher opened by going for the frame, not the footwork. “We have seen the goals and assists for Bayer Leverkusen. He looks really small and he is small on the football pitch,” he said, adding that on set-pieces “it almost looks like he hasn’t got the strength to put it into the middle or the back post.”
Sturridge, a man who scored plenty of goals from awkward positions, went tactical. “I don’t think he is a natural No.10, back to goal, finding spaces,” he said. “At Leverkusen he played half 10. It was 10 and a half.” His case: put Wirtz in the left half-space and judge him there.
Carragher cut in. “Sorry to interrupt but are we saying Florian Wirtz can only play in a three at the back system?” Then, the line that made the clip: “I think you are making really big excuses for a player there.”
Sturridge did not budge. “I am not making excuses,” he said, before landing the concession that, for all the noise, was the real headline: “I agree with you he’s not been good enough for what we spent.”
Two men, one problem
Listen to it twice and you realise they agree on nearly everything that matters. Wirtz has not delivered. He was brilliant at Leverkusen coming in from the left. The fee hangs over every touch. Where they split is whether “wrong position” is a diagnosis or an alibi.
On the football, Sturridge has the better of it. Receiving on the half turn after drifting in from wide is a different job from receiving with your back to goal and a centre-half in your shorts, and anyone who played up front knows it. Sturridge reminded Carragher he had played the No.10 role himself. That landed.
Carragher’s size argument is his weakest. Wirtz was not any taller at Leverkusen, where Carragher admits the numbers were there. The body has not changed. The surroundings have.
And here is the twist: Carragher’s own best point blows a hole in his case. He described Liverpool’s manager as “a wingers man” who “will never have that guy in that position”. If that is true, Wirtz’s best role is not being wasted. It does not exist in this team. That is not a player making excuses. That is a club that bought a very expensive key without checking which door it opened.
Carragher even admitted his summer daydream: Xabi Alonso arriving at Anfield, because “nobody knows Florian Wirtz better than Xabi Alonso.” Liverpool, as he put it, decided “to go a different way.” It is about as close as a pundit gets to saying the problem is upstairs.
Where they ended up
Carragher’s way forward was to move Wirtz left, as Germany do. “You can’t just throw away a £100m player,” he said. Sturridge had been saying roughly that all along. For two men who sounded like they were about to fall out, they finished in the same place. Liverpool’s coaching staff now have to decide whether they agree with both of them.
The defeat, with Liverpool down to ten after Ryan Gravenberch’s red card, took City three points clear at the top, per Sky Sports. On the evidence of Sunday, Wirtz’s position will be argued about on Merseyside for a good deal longer than the result.
Sources: Sky Sports, Brit Brief.
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