There are footballers whose performances leave little room for disagreement. Florian Wirtz is increasingly proving to be the opposite.

Watch the same Liverpool match with two supporters and there is a good chance they will emerge with entirely different assessments of the German. One will have noticed the awareness, the disguise on his passes and the ability to find spaces that other players do not see. The other will have been frustrated by the moments when an attack slows down, a promising position comes to nothing or his influence appears to disappear from the game.

Both can point to the same 90 minutes. Both can believe they have seen the truth.

That is what makes Wirtz a Marmite footballer. It is not simply a question of whether Liverpool supporters like him. It is the way his performances divide opinion, sometimes to the point where there appears to be no middle ground between those who see a player of rare intelligence and those who remain unconvinced by his effectiveness.

Saturday’s 2-1 victory at Brentford offered a compelling illustration of that divide. Wirtz played well. He helped Liverpool turn a difficult afternoon into three points, provided the assist for Víctor Muñoz’s equaliser and repeatedly looked capable of finding a solution in tight spaces.

Yet the wider questions surrounding his Liverpool career have not suddenly disappeared.

Wirtz created nine chances from open play at Brentford, a remarkable figure that had not been reached in a Premier League match since Sadio Mané registered the same total for Liverpool against Burnley in January 2021. He was also instrumental in the equaliser, releasing Muñoz with a pass that cut through Brentford’s defensive structure.

The quality of that moment mattered as much as the statistic. Wirtz recognised the opportunity, executed the pass and gave Muñoz the chance to finish. It was the sort of intervention Liverpool expected when they invested so heavily in bringing him from Bayer Leverkusen.

His contribution was particularly valuable in a game that had become increasingly difficult to unlock. Brentford had gone ahead through Keane Lewis-Potter and, after Yehor Yarmoliuk was sent off before half-time, retreated into a defensive shape that left Liverpool needing precision rather than simply more possession.

Wirtz was well suited to that problem. He could receive between the lines, operate in crowded areas and attempt the kind of delicate passes that might create an opening when the obvious route was blocked. Iraola recognised that after the match, highlighting the need for players capable of finding small pockets of space against a well-organised defence.

This was not a performance that should be dismissed because Wirtz did not score. Nor should his contribution be reduced to whether every promising move ended with a goal.

Liverpool needed creativity, and Wirtz supplied it. His influence helped turn the match in their favour, even if the eventual winner came through Alexander Isak after Bradley Barcola’s involvement.

The criticism of Wirtz has often been that his technical ability does not translate into enough decisive moments. At Brentford, he provided one of the clearest answers to that criticism: a direct contribution to the comeback, alongside a volume of chance creation that underlined his importance to Liverpool’s attacking play.

That deserves to be acknowledged without qualification.

Nine chances created is an impressive statistic, but it is not the end of the analysis.

Chance creation measures the frequency with which a player helps produce an opportunity for a team-mate. It does not, by itself, tell us how dangerous each opportunity was, whether the pass was the best available option or how much the player influenced the match beyond those actions.

That distinction matters when assessing Wirtz because the argument around him is not really about whether he possesses technical quality. It is whether that quality consistently makes Liverpool a more effective attacking side.

An analysis of Saturday’s game highlighted that Wirtz’s expected assists figure was lower than those of Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai, despite his superior total of chances created. Expected assists is not a definitive verdict on a performance, but it illustrates why raw volume and the quality of the opportunities produced should be considered together.

There is a danger in using that information to diminish his display, just as there is in treating the nine chances as conclusive proof that every concern about his Liverpool career has been misplaced.

The more useful conclusion sits between those extremes. Wirtz demonstrated an impressive capacity to create, but the value of his contribution still needs to be assessed in context: the nature of the chances, the defensive situation, his role in Liverpool’s wider attacking structure and the consistency with which he can reproduce that influence.

That is a more demanding assessment than simply counting goals and assists. It is also a fairer one.

The scale of Liverpool’s investment in Wirtz inevitably shaped expectations. His performances at Leverkusen suggested a player capable of becoming a central figure in an elite side, not merely a gifted technician who would occasionally produce moments of brilliance.

His adaptation to Liverpool has not yet delivered that level of consistency. There have been flashes of his vision and creativity, but the overall impression has been more uneven than the club and its supporters would have wanted.

That is the context in which Saturday must be judged. A strong performance is evidence of what Wirtz can offer, not proof that every concern has been answered. Equally, a difficult afternoon should not erase the qualities that make him such an unusual talent.

Liverpool need more from him over time, particularly in turning his involvement into sustained attacking threat. They need the player who can dictate the rhythm of a match, find the decisive pass and make a defence pay for the spaces it leaves. They also need to build an attacking structure that allows him to influence games rather than asking him to solve every problem alone.

Those responsibilities are connected. Wirtz must become more consistently decisive, but Liverpool must also help create the conditions in which his strengths can flourish.

It is possible to believe he has been underwhelming across his Liverpool career so far and still recognise that he played well at Brentford. In fact, that distinction is essential to any serious assessment of him. The performance on Saturday should be judged on its own merits, while the broader verdict must be built on a much larger body of evidence.

Wirtz’s divisiveness is not necessarily evidence that his critics have failed to understand football, or that his admirers are blinded by reputation. It reflects the particular challenge of judging a creative player whose best qualities are sometimes more immediately visible than their final outcome.

Some supporters place greater weight on the movement, technique and passes that create the possibility of a chance. Others judge the same actions by what follows: whether the opportunity was genuinely dangerous, whether the attack ended in a goal and whether the player imposed himself on the contest.

Neither perspective should be accepted uncritically. Technical elegance can be mistaken for effectiveness, but a narrow focus on end product can also miss the work that makes an attack function.

The task is to bring those elements together. Wirtz should be judged neither solely by his reputation nor solely by his latest statistical return. He should be judged by the quality of his decisions, the value of the chances he creates, his influence on Liverpool’s attacking structure and how regularly he delivers those things against different opponents and in different match situations.

Brentford was a positive step. It was not a final verdict.

Perhaps that is why the debate around Wirtz feels so entrenched: supporters are not always disagreeing about what happened on the pitch so much as what they believe matters most. One sees the ingredients of a top-level playmaker; another wants to see those ingredients produce a more consistent return.

Liverpool cannot afford to settle for the argument itself. They need Wirtz to turn the moments of promise into a sustained level of influence. But they should also recognise what Saturday demonstrated: when the spaces are tight and the game demands imagination, he can offer something few players in the squad can replicate.

The question is no longer whether Wirtz has the ability. It is how often he can make that ability decisive.

Until he answers it consistently, the debate will continue. And Liverpool supporters will keep watching the same player, the same passes and the same performances — and seeing something very different.