A first Anfield season that finished with Liverpool sneaking into the Champions League and Arne Slot losing his job has left the club-record signing with a lot to prove.
Steve McManaman has now given him a target for the year ahead. The former Liverpool winger told Ladbrokes’ Seven service that Florian Wirtz’s touch was never the problem in 2025-26. The volume was.
“He does some lovely things on the ball, he just never did enough of them last year,” McManaman said.
‘Savvy to the Premier League’
“I don’t necessarily mean physically, but just all-round, I’m hoping he’ll get savvy to the Premier League, its strength and its intensity,” McManaman said.
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Andoni Iraola was appointed on 4 June 2026 after three seasons at Bournemouth, replacing Slot at the end of a campaign in which Liverpool lost 19 matches in all competitions and slid to fifth in the Premier League.
McManaman called Iraola’s Bournemouth spell “a brilliant job” and said the attacking style he prefers suits a playmaker of Wirtz’s profile.
“I’d like to think he can put a mark on the season, because I love the way he plays football,” he added.
Gerrard sent the same forecast six months earlier
Steven Gerrard offered a near-identical prediction to TNT Sports in March 2026, when Wirtz was still fighting to find his rhythm.
“I think next season’s the season,” the former Liverpool captain said. “He was always going to take a period of time to adapt. It’s a big move and the pace of the game here in England’s a lot different from Germany. I expect him to have a really strong pre-season off the back of a World Cup, and next year take this league by storm.”
“He needs to stay physically strong because it’s a more robust league, there’s more duels, there’s more physicality,” Gerrard said.
Wirtz arrived at Anfield last summer in a deal worth up to £116m, ending months of pursuit that also involved Real Madrid and Manchester City. He returned seven goals and eight assists in his first Premier League campaign, well short of the impact he made at Bayer Leverkusen.
Liverpool open their Champions League campaign at home to Atlético Madrid on Wednesday, 9 September, Iraola’s first European fixture as head coach.
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