For a brief, shining moment, it felt like Liverpool had turned a corner. Two wins on the bounce had swept away the lingering frustration and restored that familiar, purposeful swagger to the side. But football has a funny way of bringing you crashing back down to earth, and Saturday’s tedious, scoreless bore draw against Fulham served up a stark reality check.
Even with Andoni Iraola unleashing his marquee £100m+ trio in a Premier League starting XI for the first time, the Reds never truly looked like laying a glove on Marco Silva’s well-organised outfit. Alexander Isak and Bradley Barcola found themselves feeding off scraps, suffocated by a disciplined low block. Yet, inevitably, the sharpest scrutiny fell on Florian Wirtz.
To say the German playmaker has endured a complicated start to life on Merseyside would be an understatement. Yes, he covered an industrious 12.3 kilometres against the Cottagers, running himself into the ground. Yes, he delivered a genuinely encouraging cameo in midweek against Atletico Madrid. But when you wear the badge and command a nine-figure price tag, supporters are entitled to look for more than just distance covered; they want a tangible impact on the scoreline.
In the Premier League, time is a luxury few elite signings are afforded, and the patience of the Anfield faithful is beginning to fray. Into that bubbling debate steps Steve Nicol, never a man to mince his words when it comes to the club he served with such distinction.
Speaking to ESPN after the weekend’s blank canvas, the former Reds defender didn’t hesitate when asked what needs to change. In Nicol’s eyes, Wirtz’s current struggles are inadvertently clogging the team’s creative pipeline, and the solution requires a bold step backward into a formula that has delivered silverware before.
The core issue, as Nicol sees it, is the structural balance of the side. Ever since the German arrived in 2025, the midfield mechanics haven’t quite clicked with the seamless rhythm of old. Let’s not forget how Liverpool marched to the Premier League title: a dynamic, hard-running engine room anchored by the trusted trio of Dominik Szoboszlai, Ryan Gravenberch, and Alexis Mac Allister.
For Nicol, nostalgia isn’t just comforting it’s tactical common sense. He wants Iraola to rip up the current blueprint and reinstate that title-winning midfield triad, which would mean benching Wirtz in favour of pushing Szoboszlai into the advanced No. 10 role.
“He’s \[Wirtz\] not part of my front four,” Nicol bluntly declared, assessing a domestic campaign where the playmaker’s flashes of brilliance have been far too sporadic. While acknowledging the midweek Champions League display as his finest outing in red yet, the Scot pointed out the glaring inconsistency: “That’s one game in how many?”
The tactical rationale behind Nicol’s preference for Szoboszlai boils down to pure geometry and gravity. When Wirtz receives the ball in tight central areas, opposing backlines know they can simply hold their shape, deny him a yard of separation, and crowd the space without ever truly panicking. They don’t have to overcommit.
Szoboszlai, by contrast, presents a terrifyingly different problem for a low block.
“When you have Szoboszlai in the middle and he has the ball at his feet, the one thing you know he’s going to do – if you give him any time – is he’s going to have a shot,” [Nicol reasoned.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvWcax6qoXw) “He’s shown that anywhere from 30 yards he’s capable of sticking it in the back of your net.”
That singular threat alters everything. Midfielders and centre-backs cannot afford to sit off a player who can detonate a rocket from twenty-five yards out; they are forced to break their defensive line and engage him instantly. The moment an opponent steps out to close down the Hungarian, microscopic gaps appear behind them—clever little pockets of space where Isak and Liverpool’s wide forwards can finally do damage.
It is a sharp, clinical observation of why the current attacking machine is misfiring. Wirtz undoubtedly possesses the ceiling to become a superstar in English football, but right now, he is learning the hard way that potential doesn’t win you matches in the trenches of the Premier League.
With a demanding run of fixtures looming over the autumn, Iraola faces a delicate management job. He must decide whether to continue nursing a high-profile signing through his teething problems or listen to the legends and the restless masses on the Kop, who are increasingly wondering if the answer to Liverpool’s creative stagnation has been sitting on the bench all along.