Arne Slot has revealed that Florian Wirtz has been following a weight-gain programme to help him adapt to the physical demands of the Premier League, with the Liverpool head coach pleased by the Germany international’s recent progress.
Liverpool travel to Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday aiming to extend their unbeaten run to six games, and Slot says Wirtz’s performances in recent weeks have been encouraging.
Although the 22-year-old is yet to score his first official Premier League goal, he played a key role in the 1-1 draw with Sunderland, forcing Nordi Mukiele into an own goal at Anfield.
Signed from Bayer Leverkusen for a then club-record £116m in June, Wirtz also impressed in the 2-0 win at West Ham United and again in last weekend’s victory by the same scoreline over Brighton & Hove Albion.
Those displays mark a clear improvement on the early stages of his Liverpool career, when he struggled with the league’s intensity.
Slot believes the midfielder, who is thought to have added more than 2.5 kilograms of muscle, is now beginning to find his feet in England.
“To come back to your question, I hope I made it clear that I am talking not just about the new players (who have needed to adapt) but players in general, Florian has improved a lot,” Slot said.
“I am not talking about his ability on the ball because we could see from the start that that was top.
“But I saw in one moment against Brighton where he took the ball off Dom (Szoboszlai), he dribbled and a player came to him and he pushed him away and kept on dribbling. Then he provided a cut back cross for Hugo [Ekitike] who shot over the bar.
“Later he won the duel with (Brighton’s) Jan Paul van Hecke that led to the counter attack with the shot from Mo (Salah). In those moments you see it gets easier for him.
“It takes a lot, a lot, a lot of effort for him to play in this intensity but he is getting used to it. That is my take.
“Both (fitness and weight work). A lot of them have grown in kilograms, in muscle. That’s one thing.
“And secondly, if you are only in the gym you cannot be prepared for 90 minutes of Premier League football. It is about playing those games, I would say training but we hardly ever do that, so it’s playing, playing, playing.
“The only way to make these players better is by playing them. I have played players during the season when you would usually take pre-season for that.
“The only way to get Florian stronger, Macca (Alexis Mac Allister), Conor Bradley, Joe Gomez, is to play games.
“So yeah, it’s a combination of things but definitely also about the gym work where they all get stronger.”
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