![\"Roy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/0_Screenshot-2026-02-12-at-175128.png\")
<\/p>\nFlorian Wirtz did not have the instant impact that many people expected him to after joining Liverpool, but he has emerged as a top performer for the Reds in recent weeks<\/p>\n
Roy Keane assessed Florian Wirtz’s Liverpool career<\/p>\n
Roy Keane believes the Premier League will start to see the best of Florian Wirtz next season.<\/p>\n
Wirtz<\/a> moved to Merseyside from Bayer Leverkusen for a huge transfer fee last summer, and faced criticism for his performances in the early part of the season.<\/p>\n However, his level has clearly improved in recent weeks and he is starting to establish himself as one of the most important players in Arne Slot<\/a>‘s team.<\/p>\n In the latest episode of the Stick to Football<\/a> podcast, Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Roy Keane, Ian Wright and Jill Scott debated which big Premier League attacking signings from last summer have been hits and which have been misses.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Darwin Nunez dealt huge setback as Karim Benzema arrival creates Saudi nightmare<\/a>READ MORE: Impact of Liverpool missing out on Champions League laid bare with huge financial implications<\/a><\/p>\n Assessing Wirtz, Neville asked: “Florian Wirtz \u2013 four Premier League goals, two assists in 24 games. Has he been a hit so far, a miss, or a maybe?”<\/p>\n Carragher responded: “I think he’s in the middle. He’s a maybe. He’s definitely improved.” Wright added: “He done some good stuff, you can see he’s coming on.” Scott said: “He just needs a bit of time.”<\/p>\n Roy Keane then drew similarities between Wirtz and another diminutive midfielder who took his time to get going in the Premier League.<\/p>\n “I still think it’ll take him a full season to get up to speed,” Keane said. “I think next year… remember when [Luka] Modric and all these boys took their time at Spurs to get used to the physicality, and he ended up playing in a two. I could not see how he (Modric) was going to become a top player.”<\/p>\n Florian Wirtz has started to show his quality for Liverpool on a consistent basis (Image: AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Wirtz produced another impressive performance on Wednesday as Liverpool registered a 1-0 victory over Sunderland, becoming the first team to win an away league game at the Stadium of Light this season.<\/p>\n Virgil van Dijk scored the winning goal, but Arne Slot believes Wirtz’s performance merited a goal. “Not for the first time he was really good,” Slot said. But recently when he was really good he was also involved in goals and assists.<\/p>\n “I think today he was very close and maybe should have been on the scoreboard with the amount of quality he has.<\/p>\n “But it’s good to see, not only him but also other players developing so well and playing another good game of football.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florian Wirtz did not have the instant impact that many people expected him to after joining Liverpool, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2226,218,134,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-422633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-florian-wirtz","tag-football","tag-liverpool-fc","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Florian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1_FBL-ENG-PR-LIVERPOOL-NEWCASTLE.jpg\")
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