Wirtz’s assist for Víctor Muñoz’s equaliser at the Gtech Community Stadium on 17 October was, Carragher told the Sky Sports audience two nights later, the easiest part of the sequence.

“The scanning and the first touch is the assist. Not so much the pass, because that’s a simple pass for Wirtz.”

Carragher walked viewers through the shoulder-check Wirtz executed as the ball travelled toward him, first right, then left, and the touch that opened the pitch. The 23-year-old’s habit of scanning while the ball was still in flight, rather than only once it had arrived, was where the Liverpool number ten’s work actually sat.

Most of the nine, by one count

The raw number Carragher was defending had already been taken apart. Wirtz created nine chances from open play at Brentford, the most by a Premier League player in a league match since Sadio Mane’s nine for Liverpool against Burnley in January 2021, according to Opta. On an away ground, it was the most in a Premier League game since Samir Nasri’s ten for Manchester City at Tottenham in August 2011.

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In an analysis published the same night, Sports Illustrated’s Grey Whitebloom argued most of the nine chances came from sideways or backward passes, with the shooter doing most of the heavy lifting. Two came from corners. Whitebloom reached for an NBA line from Josh Hart to describe statistics of this kind: something you can lean on, but which will not get you home.

Even the Muñoz goal in the 62nd minute, Whitebloom suggested, overstated the assist, because Muñoz collected the ball 35 yards out and did most of the finishing work himself. Alexander Isak scored Liverpool’s winner eight minutes later.

Four weeks earlier, Carragher wanted him dropped

The scanning-and-touch argument came from the pundit who had been Wirtz’s loudest critic since his £116m move from Bayer Leverkusen, confirmed by the club in June 2025. After the 1-0 win at Bournemouth on 21 September, Carragher called it “one of the poorest” performances he had seen Wirtz produce in a Liverpool shirt and said he would not make his own starting eleven.

Less than a week before the Brentford match, Carragher asked whether Wirtz had “dominated one game” for Liverpool and called for him to be dropped.

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Under head coach Andoni Iraola, appointed in June after Arne Slot’s exit, Wirtz has now moved to the top of the Premier League’s chances-created table with 20 chances created at a rate of 3.2 per game. None of those 20 have yet been classified by Opta as a big chance, the data provider’s term for an opportunity a player would reasonably be expected to score.

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