How good is Liverpool-bound Florian Wirtz? | OneFootball

How good is Florian Wirtz?

Wednesday saw Wirtz named the VDV Footballer of the Season in Germany - essentially the equivalent of the PFA Player of the Year award in England. It means Wirtz has won it back-to-back.

The award, voted for by the players in Germany, has only been won back-to-back by one other player: Robert Lewandowski (who has actually done that twice, quite incredibly).

It's an incredible achievement by Wirtz, then. And all the more amazing that he's done it at 22 - and only turned 22 this month.

Two consecutive years of 22 combined goals and assists have helped him to the awards. Last season Wirtz split those evenly (11 of each) and this campaign bagged 10 goals to 12 assists.

But this is all just very raw, basic data. It certainly shows off how good Wirtz is but does it really justify a €130m transfer? We're not so sure. Fortunately, the underlying data absolutely does.

For instance, Wirtz is a goal-creating powerhouse. He's finished top of the Bundesliga for two consecutive seasons for 'goal-creating actions' when only counting those to have played at least 1800 minutes (the equivalent of 20 matches).

Those actions have primarily been 'live' passes (i.e, not set-pieces). 18 such passes led to goals this season - and he hit exactly the same number last season.

Those numbers are incredible. Overall, Wirtz performs around 0.99 goal-creating actions per 90 minutes. Mo Salah, who tops the chart for Liverpool, managed 0.72.

In other words, Wirtz makes things happen at a truly incredible rate. It's exactly the kind of statistic that highlights why other players should improve simply by playing with him - he'll put them in goalscoring positions at a regular rate.

And how he does it is incredible. As we say, Wirtz produces an awful lot of live passes that create goals but his dribbling also plays a factor. Danny Murphy recently talked about that, pointing out that Wirtz can do both - something remarkably few players can.

He created four goals through take-ons this season and last season. Only Jamie Gittens and Omar Marmoush beat that figure this season. Only Salah beat it for Liverpool this season (albeit with more games).

That kind of creativity is a god-send and exactly why Liverpool want to pay the money they're fronting here. There's also another pattern there: Wirtz essentially matched last season's efforts this season, showing absolutely no signs of dropping his form despite Leverkusen playing worse as a whole.

But on top of that, Liverpool are getting a player who can run games.

Wirtz averages around 64 passes per 90 minutes, which places him in the 98th percentile for attacking midfielders and wingers across Europe's top five leagues. For comparison, Dominik Szoboszlai averages 46 passes.

That's a dramatic uptick by moving to Wirtz, who will want to be far more involved than the Hungarian even though they play similar positions. But again, this is something Liverpool want - a highly creative force who gets on the ball and moves it.

Arne Slot hasn't had that kind of player at Liverpool, other than Salah. And that's one of the reasons why we can comfortable say that Wirtz is the Egyptian's replacement - not positionally, of course, but in impact.

He's a creative force that few in Europe can match and he's only just turned 22. Give him two years with Salah and he will be the player who can replace him as the new king at Anfield.