Chiesa, Bradley, Gravenberch and Alisson have all also been better.
£120m. That’s the beginning and end of the conversation. At that price, there’s no mitigation, no extenuating circumstances. Be world class or be labelled a flop. It is that binary, a fee that size dictates that, fair or not.
Chiesa has barely played and his last few cameos have been awful. In no world has he been better than Wirtz this season, no Liverpool fan will tell you this. Gravenberch had a strong start but had many mediocre performances since then, Bradley has been okay but not as good as Wirtz.
Gravenberch has been better, as has Bradley. Frimpong has shown more in his limited starts as well.
Unlike Wirtz?
I get that there are different expectations attacked to the prize tag and anything else than 15-20 goal contributions will be labelled as being bad but thats not his fault really. I think he has been decent, one of the few brighter sparks in an underperforming team, but of course overall still lacking a bit of output and sometimes better decision-making which was one of his biggest strengths when he played for us.
With him its actually the other way around, he has been better as the season progressed while Gravenberch has dropped off.
Wirtz's performance vs Leeds (H) was one of the worst I've seen from a PL player this season. He was anonymous vs Arsenal and poor vs Bournemouth. He has had just as many bad performances as he has good performances over the past few weeks. And before that, he was poor in the majority of games pre-December.
If you want to bring expectations into it, you maybe have a point. If purely on performances, Bradley especially has been worse than Wirtz this season and I would argue Gravenberch has been too, albeit I think far too much defensive workload is falling on him. He's playing an unwinnable role.
So you are agreeing that he has been better as the season progressed, which is what the poster you are replying to said.
"This turd doesn't smell as bad as it did a few weeks ago!!"
Still not enough to be considered Liverpool's third best player this season, which is what the poster said.
You'll have watched closer than I have, to be fair, so happy to defer to you on it, but it's very, very difficult to remove the massive fee lurking uncomfortably in the background when judging those performances.
True. I don't think I'd even put him top three anyway myself. Szoboszlai a lock at number 1, Alisson number 2 even ignoring injuries and Ekitike 3. Maybe Wirtz fourth but it's not exactly impressive when the rest of the team have been awful anyway.
Quality input as usual.
It’s two Leverkusen fans and no one else doing it on here.
Would they not fall under the realm of Bundesliga fans, or are Bayer fans a different sub section of fans nowadays.
See you again in a few days.
I don’t think any sensible fan of a premier league club thinks Wirtz has been any good. Most people agree he’s been a huge let down so far.
You are intellectually dishonest.
Intellectual dishonesty assumes some kind of intellect. That's where your accusation falls flat.
That’s an arrogant statement and you’re not doing yourself any favours with it. Those that don’t share your point of view are beyond reason and intellectually dishonest?
Oh, believe me, others are targeted as well.
Why the enormous arrogance? I don't think you can argue that player's performances in general are measured by anything resembling an objective standard, can you? Under that assumption, labelling others as "intellectually dishonest" seems quite out of touch, to be honest.
If you’re counting Community Shield games, yeah.
