The stats that clearly show whether new £116m Liverpool Florian Wirtz signing is worth his mega transfer fee

If it works out, and Liverpool keep winning trophies and thus trigger a heap of add-ons, Florian Wirtz will become the most expensive player in the history of English football. It’s a lot to live up to, and begs the question – can he really be worth quite so much money?

The deal which takes the German international to Anfield starts at £100m and will increased to £116m if conditions are met. It shatters the club record transfer of €85m (£72.3m) paid for Darwin Núñez, who just so happens to offer a cautionary tale about the absence of any guarantee that spending serious money will produce impressive results.

It's not the kind of money you can pay back in shirt sales - some back-of-an-envelope calculations suggest that Wirtz would need to be responsible for around 7.2m shirts sold by himself for Liverpool to break even, which is roughly three times as many as Liverpool sell in any given season - but which demands that Wirtz single-handedly elevates a team who are already Premier League champions. Can he possibly be that good – and how will Liverpool use him?

Is Florian Wirtz really worth £116m to Liverpool?

The most remarkable quality Wirtz possesses isn’t one particular thing that he’s good at, but how few things he is bad at. Able to play as a ten, a false nine or as an inside winger, Wirtz scores in volume, creates chances constantly, can pass, dribble, press and has one of the best first touches of any player in the world.

That much is evident from even a cursory glance at his stats and a few minutes watching highlight reels, but what stands out on a deeper dive is that even some of his relative ‘weaknesses’ come attached with positive caveats.

Take his ability to beat a man one-on-one. His success rate is actually quite low – 49.1% this season, up from 48.8% the year before when he inspired Bayer Leverkusen to an invincible season and a first German title – but that’s only because he attempts to beat his man remarkably often.

He tried to stand an opponent up or blast past them on the run an incredible 167 times last season, surely some sort of record across the continent, and for all the times he failed, he succeeded just as often with dazzling skill. Not only is his first touch sublime, but his second is arguably better, backed up by a stunning sudden turn of pace and direction that few defenders can match.

In essence, he was given license by Xabi Alonso to take the high-risk, high-reward option every time, in the full knowledge that it was pay off often enough to be worth it. That explains the only occasional blips in his production and statistical output.

He not only scores plenty of goals – 34 over the past two seasons – but provides them too (35 in the same time frame) and just as tellingly is involved in the build-up to a massive 5.53 shooting chances per game. Only 7% of all attacking midfielders and wingers in the ‘big five’ leagues managed more, and few of them can boast such an exceptional all-round game.

The long and short of it is that Wirtz is already a world class player, and at the age of just 22 still presumably has room for improvement. He’s dynamic, can beat defenders in any way he pleases, creates enormous volumes of chances, and finishes his own well enough to outscore his expected goals.

Any decent statistical analysis of a player always looks to find the counterpoint, the soft spots which a manager has to work to mitigate. Wirtz doesn’t have any, save that he is not, as yet, quite as productive in terms of goal contributions as the very best in the world. Fortunately, Liverpool have one of the few players already better in Mohamed Salah, who scored more goals last season than Wirtz managed goals and assists combined.

The only weakness Wirtz has is that while he scores and provides plenty of goals, the very best find ways to do it even more often. If £100m or more demands a player at the very peak of the game, there’s an argument that Wirtz has just a little further to go, a little more precision and a little more production to make up. But he’s on the cusp already, with perhaps a decade at the top ahead of him. It’s hard to provide a balanced assessment of a player when there are so few negatives to draw upon.

Where will Florian Wirtz play for Liverpool?

All of which only really leaves one thing to think through – where he will actually play. It’s not an easy question to answer.

In the system Arne Slot used to win the Premier League this year, Wirtz would most naturally fit into either the number ten role or as a left winger, but he isn’t a clean fit for either if we assume that would play in much the same way he did at Leverkusen.

He plays much further forward than Dominik Szoboszlai did, and needs to in order to get the best out of his remarkable ability to create for the tightest of spaces and break defensive lines. And while he can nominally play on the left wing, his role at Leverkusen was far narrower – and far more freewheeling – than that which was acted out by Luis Díaz or Cody Gakpo.

The centre-forward slot could make some sense, but while he can play as a false nine there is no argument that he’s better as a creator than as a finisher, as good as he is at scoring goals. Liverpool have surely not spent £100m or more to ask a player to operate with one hand tied behind his back by the tactics.

Which means that for Slot to efficiently make use of the most expensive player in the history of the club and perhaps country, he will have to adjust his tactics. A likely scenario is that Slot moves Salah into a more central primary position, mirroring the ‘split tens’ system used by Alonso at Leverkusen.

That should also mesh with the signing of Wirtz’s old team-mate Jeremie Frimpong and the potential signing of Bournemouth’s Milos Kerkez, both wing-backs who are more than capable of providing offensive support and chances from wide areas, but would leave a question mark over where natural wide players like Díaz fit in.

Another alternative is to essential abolish the Szoboszlai role and move the ten further forward, into closer contact with the front three. That would accommodate Wirtz but put greater strain on the ball-winning capabilities of a midfield which lacks a true defensive midfielder.

Whichever solution Slot opts for, there will be compromises and it’s a knotty issue for him to work through during pre-season – but the rewards of incorporating a player of Wirtz’s quality into a team surely outweigh the risks of upsetting a balanced system which worked extremely well during the 2024/25 campaign.

For £116m you don’t just need a player who makes the difference between winning matches and losing them, but a player who makes the difference between winning titles and losing them. Wirtz has quite a lot to live up to – but if any player on the market this summer has the talent…