Cody Gakpo’s goal sealed a much-needed victory for Liverpool in Germany, but it was the provider of the assist, Florian Wirtz, who drew the attention of his team-mates. It was a moment of triumph for Wirtz, marking his first assist in over two months. Like London buses, another assist soon followed, this time setting up Dominik Szoboszlai to score from 20 yards out, rounding off a 5-1 Champions League win against Eintracht Frankfurt.
After a dry spell, Wirtz was simply relieved to have made a significant contribution, silencing some of the criticism he has faced since his £116million move from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer. Liverpool left-back Andy Robertson praised Wirtz’s performance, saying: “I thought he was outstanding, excellent. I thought he grew and grew into the game, especially the second half.
“Players around him helped him a lot – Curtis Jones was outstanding – and I thought the three midfielders helped us gain the momentum and keep the ball. Flo has been really good since he came here.
“People focus on numbers of goals and assists but at times it’s unfair as he’s created a hell of a lot of chances and on Wednesday some of the chances he created ended up as an assist. Hopefully he can take a lot from this performance.”
Robertson isn’t mistaken when he highlights the sheer volume of opportunities crafted by Wirtz that Liverpool have failed to convert. No Premier League player has generated more chances across all competitions this season, with the Germany international also sitting top for open-play chances and expected assists.
He also leads the pack for chances created per 90 minutes among players who have logged at least 200 minutes this campaign. Robertson, making just his third start of the season ahead of Milos Kerkez, now boasts a goal and assist in the Champions League after teeing up Hugo Ekitike to level against his former side and settle Liverpool’s nerves following Rasmus Kristensen’s opener for Frankfurt.
Headers from corners by centre-back pairing Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate swung the match decisively in the visitors’ favour before the interval, with Frankfurt manager Dino Toppmoller subsequently conceding his side couldn’t handle Liverpool’s set-piece threat – an aspect of their play Reds boss Arne Slot has called upon his squad to strengthen.
“We work on it all the time, every team does now,” said Robertson. “You’ve seen it is a huge part of the game. We’ve conceded a few set-pieces and that has been hugely disappointing and we have to get better at that and we’ve probably not scored as many as we should with the deliveries we’ve had.
“Thankfully it paid off, the deliveries were spot-on, the blocks were spot on and the runners were spot-on and when you get the three things right you give yourself a hell of a chance to score and the two big lads put us 3-1 up at a crucial time.”
The Reds’ triumph in Germany, with a reshuffled squad, ended a streak of four consecutive losses that led captain Virgil van Dijk to convene an impromptu meeting with the team on Monday to address issues. “The message from the leaders in the group after Manchester United was ‘don’t panic’,” Robertson revealed.
“It was more ‘keep doing what you’re doing, keep focusing, and as long as we stick together as a group everything will turn’. If you look to your left and right the quality we have in our squad is unbelievable and if we show that on a day-to-day basis then we will be successful.
“We always talk in the changing room – even when we were winning five games in a row we talk. So that’s normal after games, whether we do it in small groups or big groups.
“When we go 3-1 up (in Frankfurt) you see lads starting to enjoy themselves and that’s what you want, people playing with a smile on their face and people enjoying playing for this club, people scoring goals, people assisting goals.
“Winning 5-1 in the Champions League is quite rare, it doesn’t happen very often, and you have to enjoy nights like this and hopefully a lot of lads take a lot from it. But it’s only one win and we have a lot of work to do – we need to put a winning streak together rather than a losing streak.”
Liverpool will now attempt to end a sequence of three successive Premier League defeats and inject fresh momentum into their title bid when they travel to Brentford on Saturday.
However, Reds vice-captain Robertson has resisted the temptation to reach out to former skipper Jordan Henderson before the reunion.
“I think if I even tried I don’t think he would text me so I’ll save that for after the game,” he said. “Hendo is an absolute legend of our club, what he has done for us within our changing room and the trophies he lifted.
“It will be nice to see him but I know he will be up for the fight like he always is and our midfield will have a hell of a battle against him, like all our players will because Brentford are a tough team. Hopefully if we get the win I can have a nice catch-up with him after the game.”