TNT Sports pundit Owen Hargreaves has suggested that Liverpool’s decision to sign Florian Wirtz has altered to balance of the starting eleven.

The Reds’ title rivals Arsenal have been accused of being too defensive despite having so many attacking players at their disposal, but Hargreaves thinks things have gone too far the other way for the Premier League champions:

“All of a sudden, you spend that money on Florian, and you’ve got to play him really. They’ve tried to get him in, and then [Dominik] Szoboszlai has played at right back, and I just think the balance is off. [Ibrahima] Konate has made a few mistakes, which we didn’t see last year. I just think it’s a balance issue.”

“They’ve got two new full-backs; the addition of Wirtz, [Alexander] Isak. You’ve got to think that they’ve got so many great players. It goes back to the Arsenal-[Mikel] Arteta thing; you’ve just got to get the balance right on the game.”

New signings need time to adapt

There isn’t a lot of patience in modern football, and so many pundits and supporters are too quick to write players off as failures.

Wirtz is clearly still finding his feet in a new league, and he isn’t coming into a settled side either, with several new signings needing to be bedded in at the same time.

Developing an understanding with new teammates takes time and it cannot be done with the press of a button. Clearly, though, Slot will have to do some fine-tuning.

Liverpool are building a plane while they’re flying it

As reigning champions, the Reds are expected to be as good, if not better than last season, considering the amount of money they have spent on new players.

However, things don’t work like that. This is A NEW TEAM. We will only discover how good they are as the season goes on, but in the meantime, Slot’s men need to pick up results to ensure they can stay in the title race.

Read more about the Liverpool First Team Squad for 2025/26 here