Taken from another lfc site
A Leverkusen supporter signed up to give his opinion on Frimpong and Wirtz.
Wirtz:
So, good evening everybody, today has been a remarkable day for sure. For the magnitude of this incoming transfer deal, I thought it would be nice to look in here and maybe chat a bit about Florian Wirtz. As my name suggests, I am a supporter of Leverkusen for close to 25 years now and although it will be sad to lose him, I am also thrilled and excited to see him (and Frimpong lol) shine on the highest level and getting the worldwide recognition he deserves. Most of all, today I am more than relieved and excited that he's not going to Bayern and every Leverkusen supporter I know shares that sentiment. Bayern have tried for years to sign him, they had countless meetings with his dad (agent) and even publicly stated that it would be "a dream" to sign him. Bayern fans have told us for months that hes coming to them and its of great satisfaction to throw it back in their face today.
But enough of that, that was just an explanation why I decided to sign up here out of excitement lol. Im always eager to follow our former players at different clubs and see how other fans view them and how they develop. Thats why I will probably read a lot about Wirtz in here when he has played his first games and why Im also here to talk to you about him if you have any questions or talking points where you might want to hear a different perspective from someone who has watched him for the last 5 years. If not, also fine, I will just be lurking and reading then. 😉
But the first piece of Wirtz propaganda I need to force on you is this: I might be biased but you are signing a sensational player, a special, special player with unique skills and qualities that only a handful on the planet possess, I am absolutely convinced he is a top 10 player in the world and has been for the past 2-3 years. Performance-wise he is the greatest player who ever wore our shirt and the only reason he might not be as hyped as players like Bellingham or Musiala is that he doesnt play for Bayern or Real Madrid but us. Im sure some of you may already have watched highlight comps or whatever but those dont even tell the full story. Hes a genius on the ball and an incredibly hard worker off the ball, he can score, he can create, he combines, he can dribble, really everything you want from an offensive midfielder and he just has that special flair that sets him apart from the rest. I truly believe he can be an absolute contender for the Ballon Dor over the next 10 years. 130+ million are worth every penny, I can assure you that (and its good money for us 😛)
That is all for now (I could write books about how good he is), like I said, if anyone has any questions or talking points about him, feel free to ask or comment.
Frimpong :
First of all, as a character you signed a fantastic guy, always smiling, always full of vibes and energy off the pitch, I have no doubt he will integrate into the group seamlessly, even moreso since he already knows Virgil, Gakpo, Gravenberch from the national team. You will love him, Im sure of that.
As a player, he has his obvious strengths. His pace and acceleration is ridiculous. When he first signed for us from Celtic and played his first minutes I was genuinenly astonished by what I saw. The way he speeds up from standing positions into full speed is frightening and combined with that he has an extremely low center of gravity which makes it incredibly hard to catch him from an opponents point of view. His first 2 or so years the amount of times he just kicked the ball past his opponent and just ran after it without any body feints and still got past them to the goal line....thats basically his signature move. What I will say about that however is that our opponents after some time caught up to that, they doubled up on him and restricted the amount of space on the outside of them so he has gotten past opponents less frequently I would say than is his first 2 years. But of course he is still a major threat just because opponents have to work very hard to limit his space and even then he has his moments and is still dangerous.
His pace of course doesnt always come into play when you have loads of possession and opponents simly play in a low block which is what most teams in the league did against us since Alonso joined us. In a team relying on more transitions this strength obviously shines more frequently which is what happened also under our previous coach who played less possession-based football. I am pretty certain you also face a lot of low blocks in league games so thats a "problem" you will probably also have. But like I said, he can still be dangerous then as he doesnt need a lot of space to accelerate and glide past players.
His crossing is fine and has gotten significantly better than in his first seasons. Thats why he has also racked up a lot of assists especially in our title winning season. He likes to play low crosses predominantly but he also played a few very good high crosses this season since we have a good box striker with Schick who could convert them with his heading. Conclusively, you may hate me for saying it but: His crossing is decent but of course nowhere near the guy who is going to Madrid, so dont expect that same level from him.
Defensively, I read a lot about his supossed weaknesses on social media since many people always seem to think that a good offensive output for a fullback automatically translates to defensive weaknesses. I think this is massively exaggerated with Frimpong. He is one of the fastest players in europe (probably top 5) and can catch up with basically any winger in running duels. He also doesnt get dribbled past easily or has massive positional errors. In saying that, I will also admit however, that it is not easy to really judge his defensive game at the moment since he has played so offensively in the past 2 years. When he first joined us he played RB in a back four but since Alonso we almost every game played a back 5 with him as a very offensive fullback. In some games he even started straight up as a winger in the front 3. In general he didnt have really much defending to do in the last 2 years. Since Liverpool play a back 4, this will obviously be his biggest transition and would have a different role than to the one hes had with us. I dont really know how inverted Salah plays for you as a RW and how much space Frimpong would have on the touchline to himself. Remains to be seen I guess but you know more about that than me.
His biggest weakness is by far his finishing. He missed a good dozen or more of 1v1's in the last 2 years. He makes very clever runs to get himself into goalscoring oppurtunities but in front of goal he has been dreadful unfortunately. His output statistically looks very good but honestly it should be much higher given the opportunities he missed.
All in all, Frimpong is a very good player (surprise) but I think its important to use him in the right system to really complement his strengths, with us this season he came across as a bit one-dimensional at times if you want to be harsh on him. But he is still young, can still grow and learn and work on his weaknesses (finishingand maybe a bit more creativity when he cant rely on his pace).
Gigiddy Gigiddy.
