Bradley Barcola and Florian Wirtz keep getting mentioned in the same breath, but the honest take on them isn't the same.
Barcola arrived from PSG this summer for £123m. He has no goals or assists in his first ten appearances, and a chunk of the internet has already filed him under bust. That's lazy. He's a winger adjusting to a new club in a new country, and he came back from an international break into a side missing half its attack. Ten games tells you nothing except that you're impatient. Give him the season. Right now Barcola just hasn't gotten going.
Wirtz is a different story. Liverpool paid a British record £116m for him, and he's well into his Anfield career with seven goals in 55 appearances to show for it. Gary Neville said he looked like a little boy against Manchester City. Michael Owen has started asking the fee question out loud. When pundits who usually pad their takes reach for that kind of language, the player has handed them the material. The Leverkusen playmaker who used to bend games to his will hasn't shown up in red, and "adapting to the Premier League" only covers so much before it just becomes an excuse.
On Sunday Liverpool took their first league defeat of the season, 0-3 to City at Anfield, their first loss under Andoni Iraola. For roughly an hour it was goalless and even. Then Ryan Gravenberch was sent off in the 62nd minute for a second yellow, on a challenge on Jeremy Doku. Haaland scored three minutes later, and Doku and Rayan Cherki finished it off once Liverpool were down to ten.
Iraola went after referee Chris Kavanagh's call, and he has a point about the first booking. Even Sky's Dermot Gallagher thought Gravenberch was unlucky with the first yellow, though he admitted the second was undeniable. The referee still didn't cost Liverpool this game. For the hour it was eleven against eleven, £239m of attacking talent produced nothing memorable. The red card is an excuse. The hour before it is why they lost.
People shouting "flops" are missing something. This team walked out without Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo through injury, and without Dominik Szoboszlai's engine in midfield. There's no settled defensive midfielder shielding the back line, the full-back situation is patched together, and into that mess Liverpool drop two expensive attackers and ask them to carry it. Cherki cost City around £34m and keeps producing because City built a functioning side around him. Liverpool bought the ornaments and skimped on the frame.
Spending £239m on two attacking signings while leaving the spine of the team thin is a choice, and it's the choice drowning Wirtz and Barcola instead of lifting them. That's the real problem. You can spend a fortune on finishers and still lose a midfield battle for an hour, which is exactly what happened before Gravenberch walked.
Barcola will be fine, or he won't; nobody knows yet. Wirtz needs to start justifying that £116m soon, because the grace period for a British-record signing runs out faster than it does for a guy who just got off the plane. The name responsible for Sunday belongs to whoever signed off on a squad built to spend like champions up front and go to war without a midfield.
