Florian Wirtz, still waiting to arrive at Liverpool

The plan always relied on him

Liverpool's forward line this season was rebuilt around the idea that Florian Wirtz would do the kind of heavy lifting their departing attackers used to do. He arrived from Bayer Leverkusen for a fee in the region of £116million, the kind of outlay that comes with an immediate expectation of goals and chances created, not a settling-in period. Seven games into the campaign, Liverpool are still unbeaten in the Premier League, but that record owes almost nothing to him.

A No 10 role, and almost nothing to show for it

The specifics are stark. Across seven starts in all competitions this season, Wirtz has one assist. He has not scored since April, back when he was still at Leverkusen and Crystal Palace were on the end of it at Anfield. He has been handed the exact role he wanted, the free No 10 part behind the striker, and the touch that made him one of the Bundesliga's most watched players has simply not turned up. Against Manchester City at Anfield he was again the weak link, giving the ball away carelessly in areas where Liverpool needed control, not risk.

The theory going into the international break was that time with Germany, now under Jürgen Klopp, might reset something. Klopp knows what Wirtz looks like at his best and was always going to be the kind of figure who could get an arm round him. That theory did not survive contact with reality. Wirtz came back from the break and was anonymous again on Sunday, which makes the regression harder to write off as early-season rust. A mixed debut campaign at Anfield was forgivable. A second season that is going backwards is a different problem entirely.

Arne Slot's puzzle

Liverpool's unbeaten start has papered over the cracks, but Arne Slot now has to find goals without the player signed to provide a chunk of them, and that is a harder puzzle than the table suggests. A title challenge built on an attack that isn't firing from its most expensive part is fragile, because it leans on other players doing more than they should have to.

The verdict

Wirtz has no goals since April, one assist all season, and a stint with his national-team manager that was supposed to help and apparently didn't. If Liverpool's season is going to turn on anything, it's whether their record signing starts looking like one again, and right now there's no sign of it.