Carragher goes from Wirtz knee-jerk to starry-eyed extreme – ‘Almost’ De Bruyne *and* David Silva | OneFootball

Jamie Carragher has gone from questioning whether Florian Wirtz would ever be as good as Sami Hypia for Liverpool to claiming he’s a blend of two of the Premier League’s greatest ever playmakers in the space of three months.

Wirtz produced one of his best performances for Liverpool on Saturday, scoring and assisting in the 4-1 win over Newcastle at Anfield as his rise to prominence for the Reds continues after a difficult start to life in the English top flight following his £100m summer move from Bayer Leverkusen.

His early form was such that some were questioning whether he had it in him to adapt to the speed and physicality of the Premier League. He didn’t register a goal or an assist in his first 12 appearances and during that barren run Carragher posited that former Liverpool “greats” hadn’t taken any time to get up to speed.

He said in October: “If I’m being honest, if I think of the great foreign signings – Sami Hyppia, Mo Salah, Sadio Mane, Luis Suarez, Didi Hamann – they all hit the ground running.

“I can’t think of many, who had an average, poor start. I’m not talking seven games by the way but if you’re getting to Christmas and January and being like, ‘Oh’. History doesn’t tell me that foreign signings come into England take a year.”

And now, following that knee-jerk reaction to Wirtz’s difficult start, Carragher is wondering if Wirtz may actually have the quality to “take up the mantle” from De Bruyne, the most effective attacking midfielder in Premier League history, and could be that goal-contribution machine in the style of David Silva, maybe the most graceful midfielder we’ve ever had the pleasure of watching on these shores.

“Wirtz is getting better all the time,” Carragher said on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football. “Eventually, the mantle has to be passed on, and there is no doubt the lad has real quality.

“The Premier League has lost Kevin De Bruyne, (but) we have gained Wirtz. We are talking about special players coming into our league. I have watched him a lot and thought about whether he can get to De Bruyne’s level. When I watch Wirtz, I think he could be lovely on the eye like David Silva, but he has almost a bit of both.

“I’m not sure if he will get the numbers De Bruyne got. But, talking about a slow start… one of the games was City away and Gary Neville said he looked like a boy out there – now he has City at Anfield (this weekend). He is confident. He has gone from a little boy, and it’s a great opportunity to shove those words down Neville’s throat.”

It’s an extraordinary change of position from Carragher, who was too quick to question Wirtz and now far too willing to extol the virtues of a midfielder whose recent uptick in performances to provoke such a starry-eyed reaction has yielded four goals and two assists in eight games.

Wirtz is a lovely footballer to watch and here’s hoping that De Bruyne mantle has indeed been passed to the German, all the better if Silva sprinkled some of his magic on the mantle before he left the Etihad, but let’s maybe not swap one knee-jerk reaction for a second one and give the guy a season, or even two, before hailing him as the second coming.