Former Liverpool player more annoyed at Florian Wirtz signing than Luis Díaz sale to Bayern Munich

 Bayern Munich is loving life right now, enjoying a winning streak of which Luis Díaz is a key part of. The same can’t be said for his old team Liverpool, who just lost four games on the bounce, the latest of which is a humiliating 2-1 loss to Manchester United at Anfield. That gave the Red Devils their first win away at Liverpool since 17 January 2016. Florian Wirtz once again offered nothing to the already toothless Liverpool attack, and a former player has had enough of it.

“I think it’s more annoying when you spend a lot of money on somebody and it’s not working because then you have to figure it out at the end of the day,” ex-Liverpool man Steve Nicol said on ESPN (via Rousing The Kop). “Your attitude has to be, ‘He was great for us (Luis Diaz)’. He’s now gone. He’s playing somewhere else. Good luck to you and forget about it. So the Diaz one shouldn’t annoy you. You’ve got to look at what you’re dealing with and forget everybody else or anybody else. So, it would have to be the first one.”

Nicol indicated that the Colombian wanted out of Liverpool, so he was fine with that; you can’t stop a player from leaving if he wants out. It’s the total mismatch (and embodiment of non-factor) of Wirtz that grinds his gears because it seems Arne Slot has yet to figure out his ideal XI. Wirtz is the odd one out because the role where he thrived at Bayer Leverkusen doesn’t exist in Slot’s system. In fact, all Slot does is either over-rotate or keep the same players and hope his subs save the day. Trying to throw on all the attackers has not done his team much good either.

Not to pile on Liverpool too much, but to show how terribly Wirtz and Alexander Isak (Liverpool’s marquee signings) are performing, I tweeted this during the international break:

Bjorn Kristensen is the striker for my national team, and he just scored five goals in two games for the country at that time. Add in his club stats and he’s on 8G/A for the season so far (7G, 1A). Kristensen costs 0.1% of the combined fee that Liverpool paid for Isak and Wirtz, and he’s already had more goal contributions than the two of them. At the end of the day, Bayern paid around one Michael Olise less for the better player.

For Man United, it’s a much-needed win to boost the morale of the team and drag the struggling Manchester side into the top half of the table. Harry Maguire in particular will feel vindicated with his winning goal, due to the fact that he missed a 97th minute chance in the last meeting between the two teams that would’ve given his team a 3-2 win.