In a struggle to come up with “positives” surrounding Florian Wirtz grim start to life at Liverpool, former Reds star Steve Nicol has damned the Germany international with faint praise.

Wirtz is yet to score for Liverpool since his ￡100m move from Bayer Leverkusen and has claimed just two assists.

After the 3-0 defeat to Manchester City on Sunday, Gary Neville claimed he looked like a “little boy” and Nicol, who made 459 appearances for Liverpool, has scraped the barrel in his bid to find plus points at the start of his Anfield career.

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“If we are going to put a positive on Florian Wirtz, I would say that number one, he’s kept his mouth shut. He’s not in the papers talking about how he isn’t playing,” he said on ESPN.

“But the other thing I would say is when he actually has been on the field, he hasn’t been hiding.

“He’s looking for the ball, he’s not sulking, not walking around with his tail between his legs, he’s actually trying to get involved and do what he does.

“It just isn’t working right now. But to be fair to him, given how young he is, throw in all the other stuff about the new team and all the rest of it, but he is not hiding and that is really important for the fans, manager and the players around him.”

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Germany head coach Julian Nagelsmann came to Wirtz’s aid in?his press conference ahead of World Cup qualifiers against Luxembourg and Slovakia, claiming his teammates are to blame for the playmaker’s inauspicious start to life in the Premier League.

He said: “To be honest, the whole situation does not make it easy for him either. The whole club itself is not as stable this year as it was last year. It’s much harder to slip into the team now.

“If you look vs City, they were the worse team over the 90 minutes. So it is also difficult for Flo to make any real big impact.

“Ultimately, the overall situation is such that he just needs a little more time – which is normal and you see that with other players, who move to the English Premier League as well.”

Nagelsmann added: “We all know what he is capable of and it is perfectly normal for a player of his age to go through a bit of a dip in form.

“We cannot expect him to perform at the same level for three years straight.

“Instead, we all need to support him a little bit, so that he can clear his head here and then, maybe, Liverpool could also help him out by scoring some of the chances he creates.

“That would be one idea, because he does create a few chances. It is just that they somehow do not like to shoot the ball in, from those chances. That is part of the truth.”