Yan Diomande: Why Wirtz, Gittens and Bundesliga drop-offs give Liverpool a transfer warning
Below is a summary of the full article. Click here for the full version from Echo or go back to LFC Live.
That interest was first reported in the days after Salah's mixed-zone outburst at Elland Road had left the icon's Liverpool future up in the air just months after signing a two-year contract extension.Diomande is young and has just one full season of senior football under his belt, but he has all the tools to make it to the very top. The reason clubs like Liverpool and PSG have been credited with interest in the 19-year-old Ivorian is that his numbers this season have been off the charts.For example, no other player in the Bundesliga completed more dribbles than Diomande's 118 this season.
This, in a league that includes Michael Olise, Luis Diaz, Karim Adeyemi and fellow rumoured Liverpool target Bazoumana Toure.At 19 and in his first season in Germany, Diomande scored 13 goals and assisted 10 from 36 appearances, including a run of eight goal contributions in 10 games from February to April to guide RB Leipzig to Champions League qualification.Diomande is as close to genuinely two-footed as you can get, and is equally confident cutting inside to wreak havoc as he is beating players with pace and technicality around the outside to cut balls back across the box for his teammates.There was a time when Liverpool's heralded transfer committee wouldn't move for players they didn't have 100 games' worth of data on. But the signings of Giovanni Leoni and Jeremy Jacquet have since put that idea to bed, and clubs now have access to more data than was ever available before to make informed decisions about which players to target, even at such a young age.Evidently, Diomande has been identified as the injection of quality Liverpool need in wide areas after a season of struggles in that department of the pitch.Whether the club are willing to pay Leipzig's massive asking price, whether PSG's reported interest in him could force such a commitment, or whether Harvey Elliott - who was previously linked with Leipzig - could be used as a makeweight are all questions for Liverpool's sporting director Richard Hughes and recruitment team.The stats behind the Bundesliga 'drop-off' in creativityWhat supporters will want to know, however, is how he could be expected to perform in the Premier League.Using Machine Football's data, Diomande has been much more broadly involved in creativity and build-up than Salah this season, recording 5.31 recoveries per 90 to the Egyptian's 2.61 and contributing more link-up actions (4.32 to Salah's 2.90).This isn't just a question of Salah's drop-off, though it has been stark.
Most obviously, he's primarily right-footed playing on the right, and with his ball-carrying ability and creativity, he's been as much a facilitator as a finisher.He's far more comparable to Diaz or Rio Ngumoha in his playing style, only more mature off the ball than the latter. Liverpool will hope a player of his profile can bring the best out of Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz.But if Diomande's reputation is sky-high, Wirtz's was stratospheric when he signed from fellow Bundesliga side Bayer Leverkusen last summer.Wirtz was already considered Germany's best player and had performed consistently for Leverkusen over five seasons before moving to Liverpool.But in his debut season at Anfield, Wirtz registered his worst season in terms of goal contributions since missing the first half of the 2022-23 season with a cruciate ligament tear.He did not become a worse player overnight, but his adaptation to English football has not been smooth.