James Pearce has delivered a positive update on the team news front for Liverpool ahead of their Premier League clash against Aston Villa on Friday night.
The Reds were without several first-team regulars for the frustrating 1-1 draw at home to Chelsea last weekend, with Mo Salah, Hugo Ekitike, Alisson Becker and Florian Wirtz all absent for that fixture.
Two of those now appear to be on course to return for tomorrow. Reports from Brazil indicated that the goalkeeper should be available, and there’s now been some good news about the Germany playmaker, who missed last week’s match with a stomach bug.
In the latest episode of the Walk On podcast, Pearce and his fellow Liverpool reporters from The Athletic were looking ahead to the Villa game, and his update on the Reds’ number 7 will come as music to supporters’ ears.
He outlined: “Florian Wirtz will come back in; I think he will start. I’m told that his stomach issue that ruled him out last weekend – he’s now recovered from that and he has trained.”
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The German’s likely involvement against Unai Emery’s side on Friday will come as a significant boost to Liverpool, who missed his creativity against Chelsea last week.
Admittedly the 23-year-old hasn’t been in the best of form in recent games – his performance against Manchester United earlier this month came in for plenty of criticism – but we could really have done with his skill set to inject a greater attacking threat in a sterile outing against the Blues five days ago.
If Wirtz is fit enough to start, it’ll be interesting to see where he’s deployed on the pitch. He was used as a false 9 at Old Trafford out of necessity, but with Alexander Isak having since returned, perhaps he’ll lead the line tomorrow and our number 7 will line up in his strongest position just behind the attack.
Arne Slot is set to provide further team news updates when he holds his pre-match press conference on Thursday morning, and hopefully he’ll confirm what Pearce has hinted in relation to the Germany playmaker.
The ex-Bayer Leverkusen man mightn’t have had the most prolific of debut seasons for Liverpool, but if he’s back tomorrow night and makes a decisive impact at Villa Park to secure Champions League qualification, it’d go quite a way towards repaying his transfer fee from last summer.
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