Is Liverpool’s “schoolboy” Christian Benteke really to blame for having flopped under Klopp?

Add as preferred source on Google

Do not let his last-gasp winner against Crystal Palace cloud the issue. Christian Benteke has registered eight goals in 33 appearances and had failed to score in his previous 12 games. These two stats alone sum up what the Anfield faithful already know: the Belgian striker has been woeful since he made the record-breaking 32.5-million-pound move from Aston Villa to the ever-chilly Merseyside. Ironically, the significant expenditure was indicative of a panic buy by a Liverpool side in dire need of goals. On that and many other fronts, Benteke has failed to live up to the hype in no uncertain terms, and that has seen him start the last six matches on the bench (including the Capital One Cup final). However, does the buck really stop with the once-prolific striker who scored 19 in 34 games to keep Villa up just two seasons prior to this one? Arguably, it is instead misguided transfer policy that condemned this attacking talent to failure from the very beginning.

Embed from Getty Images

“If Liverpool bought me, then they know how to use me” – words from the Belgian himself as he responded to questions on how he would fit into a Liverpool side known for short passing and a quick fluid tempo to build-up play. Well unfortunately, that is just not the case and we do not have to peer too far into recent history to see a very similar contradiction in playing styles. In 2011, Andy Carroll made a move from Newcastle to Liverpool for a whopping 35 million pounds (making him the most expensive English player at the time); and yet he departed in a hasty transfer to West Ham just a year-and-a-half later for a staggering 20-million-pound loss. The reasons for Carroll’s failure look uncomfortably similar to that of Benteke’s. Liverpool have; in both cases, brought in strikers renowned for their aerial abilities without having a system of play which provides these aerial threats with the constant supply of high-quality crosses that big forwards thrive on. In the Dalglish era, perhaps the mismatch of styles was slightly more bewildering: Stewart Downing, who does possess the ability to provide decent delivery with his left foot, was constantly played on the right, much to the frustration of Carroll, Liverpool fans and pundits alike.

Nevertheless, it does not take a footballing genius to work out that the Liverpool of the Rodgers era was never going to provide Benteke with a suitable avenue to fully display his abilities; and to prove that point, Tim Sherwood himself recognised that the reason Benteke thrived at Villa was because he “feeds off crosses” and Villa “cross more balls than any other teams”. With short passes a fundamental feature of Liverpool’s possession play and killer through-balls in behind being the attacking option of choice, Benteke was always going to be starved of goal-scoring opportunities. An exasperating example from the Belgian’s point of view would be how marauding full-backs Clyne and Moreno constantly check back and look for cute passes to samba playmakers Coutinho and Firmino instead of swinging crosses into the box for the no. 9 to terrorise.

Benteke’s earlier comment was an unfortunately misguided defence of Liverpool’s decision to sign him despite the apparent clash of styles, but then Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers’ remarks on the issue smacked of downright delusion or denial or both. He claimed that Benteke’s impressive displays for Villa (including his brace which dumped Liverpool out of the FA Cup semi-finals last season) proved that “he can play any type of game”. If he truly meant this, then it will go down as one of the worst attempts to profile a player in the history of football. To highlight just how far off the mark this assessment of the striker was, let’s zone in on the two main “qualities” of Benteke highlighted by Rodgers. First, the ability to “penetrate the space in behind”. Benteke has averaged the most number of offsides per game (1.3) in the league for players who have played more than 10 games, with pundits labelling his runs in behind as “schoolboy” as they highlight his lack of awareness and general ineptitude when trying to read the backline of defences. Second, that “he can link the game up”. As Abdirahman Ali of ’90 mins’ succinctly pointed out, while Benteke’s deal was being finalised, “the striker has the worst pass accuracy of any regular outfield player at either Villa or Liverpool (out of 39 players)” and “fails to find a player in every third pass”. This incompatibility was clear for everyone to see before the transfer and surely Rodgers had to be aware of that.

Embed from Getty Images

Benteke is and has always been a striker to dominate the air with his strength and physique, winning 188 aerial duels in the previous season and scoring the most number of headed goals (13) since moving to England (even more than Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud, who now holds the record for the most number of headed goals in top flight English football). That being said, the fact that only 13 out of 42 of Benteke’s league goals while with Villa had come from headers does reflect that the striker has more to his game than getting on the end of crosses; but these chances were often created through his strength in holding up the play with his back to goal, clinical finishing with brilliant technique (the left-footed curler against Manchester United comes to mind), and an astute penchant for poaching goals by being in the right place at the right time. All of these undoubtedly display multi-faceted skills that do indeed make Benteke a more all-rounded and thus potent attacking force. However, that does not make him the striker that Liverpool want him to be, i.e. the agile striker that gets in behind or (now more appropriately under Klopp) one that presses the back line with boundless energy. He is still a relatively traditional no. 9, just with a more varied attacking arsenal. Hence, Liverpool have gotten exactly what they ordered: a striker who is good at what he does but is doomed to fail unless you give him the necessary service and tailor a style of play around him to suit his strengths, something that the Reds do not seem likely to do anytime soon.

Yet many who backed Rodgers believe that he saw the very same things that many pundits and fans did before the transfer, and truthfully it is hard to see how he could have missed the glaring incompatibilities. Perhaps Rodgers and Benteke were just the next victims of Fenway Sports Group’s “moneyball strategy”. The owners of Liverpool first delved into sports when they took over the Boston Red Sox baseball team, implementing a trading strategy that was very heavily centred around purely reviewing players’ statistics. While this might have succeeded in bringing the Red Sox glory, many pundits at the time had their doubts on whether this strategy was appropriate for the game of football; after a 100-million-pound outlay on a variety of clearly overpriced deals for players such as unproven Serbian starlet Markovic who cost 20 million pounds and who is now on loan just a season after, perhaps it is time to declare the strategy debunked. Ultimately, for every Suarez, there is a Carroll. For every Sturridge, there is a Balotelli. Now that Roberto Firmino is looking like a shrewd piece of business for the Reds as the Brazilian finally settles into life in Merseyside and flourishes under Klopp, the pattern of hit-or-miss transfer splurges under FSG looks set to continue with the bumbling Belgian that is Benteke.

There is perhaps some saving grace for Liverpool fans however. While the owners never seemed willing to hand manager Brendan Rodgers full control over the transfers and instead left it to a separate transfer committee, they now seem to have abandoned this mode of operation. In truth, not letting the manager dictate which players to buy and sell was never a feasible way to run a football club. Managers are responsible for developing a style and system of play, are held accountable for results, and thus by extension should logically be given most control over the set of players he gets to work with. Maybe current manager Jurgen Klopp made the control of transfer policy a strict condition before he signed, or perhaps FSG identified a failed system and learned from the mistake. Either way, the current manager has time and again reiterated to the media his confidence in having “full control” over the transfers. Only time will tell whether that is truly the case, and if so one can only wonder what that will mean for poor Christian Benteke. For now, all the Liverpool forward can seek to do for the foreseeable future is to make a game-changing impact from the bench, if only to secure a move to a team that will actually cross the ball to him.

Featured Image: All rights reserved by arsenal_wallpapers