When Wirtz started out at Liverpool, he was often brushed off the ball as he struggled to adapt to the rigours of the Premier League. However, the Reds are now putting him on a weight-gain programme, and while it is early days, manager Slot is pleased with what he has seen so far. Although he is yet to open his goalscoring account and is a long way off his 31-goal contributions for Leverkusen last season, he has impressed in recent weeks.
Slot told the Liverpool Echo: "To come back to your question, I hope I made it clear that I am talking not just about the new players (who have needed to adapt) but players in general, Florian has improved a lot. I am not talking about his ability on the ball because we could see from the start that that was top. But I saw in one moment against Brighton where he took the ball off Dom (Szoboszlai), he dribbled and a player came to him and he pushed him away and kept on dribbling. Then he provided a cut back cross for Hugo [Ekitike] who shot over the bar. Later he won the duel with (Brighton's) Jan Paul van Hecke that led to the counter attack with the shot from Mo (Salah).
"In those moments you see it gets easier for him. It takes a lot, a lot, a lot of effort for him to play in this intensity but he is getting used to it. That is my take. Both (fitness and weight work). A lot of them have grown in kilograms, in muscle. That’s one thing. And secondly, if you are only in the gym you cannot be prepared for 90 minutes of Premier League football. It is about playing those games, I would say training but we hardly ever do that, so it’s playing, playing, playing."
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