Player Focus: Too Soon to Write Off Out of Form Benteke's Liverpool Chances

Something very weird has happened to Christian Benteke since Christmas. Over that period, he has scored the winning goal twice and yet his confidence seems to have evaporated. His misses in injury-time against both Leicester City and Sunderland were troubling, while his performance in the 2-0 defeat to West Ham was that of a player whose self-belief has deserted him.

Benteke has always been a streaky player. His final 15 games for Aston Villa brought 13 goals, having scored three in the 17 games before that – that is, in the period immediately after his return from his Achilles injury. His first 39 games for the club, before the injury, had yielded 22 goals, and that after a slightly slow start. Which is a way of saying that however bad Benteke was against West Ham, it would be wrong to write him off on the back of that: he is a player who has significant ups and significant downs.

But neither can it be disguised just how bad Benteke was at Upton Park. None of his five shots were on target. He was dispossessed four times. He lost the ball with bad first touches twice. He played only 28 passes, fewer than any other Liverpool player apart from Alberto Moreno (he played the same number as Moreno, 28, but Moreno was taken off after an hour). His WhoScored.com rating of 5.59, the lowest on the pitch, was well deserved.

The widespread theory is that Benteke doesn’t fit Liverpool’s system, that he is not a Jurgen Klopp-style player. There is truth to that. Klopp’s front men at Borussia Dortmund, Lucas Barrios and then Robert Lewandowski, were far more mobile than Benteke. Klopp, intriguingly, spoke after the game of the danger posed by Andy Carroll and how “we could have done the same”; could have slung crosses into the box, but chose not to. He prioritises his way of playing over the skill-sets of the individual players (assuming that is, that Liverpool have the players to provide the service to Benteke, which they may not).

For the most part, Benteke’s statistics this season don’t differ wildly from those in his three seasons at Aston Villa. Aerials won and shots per game are down slightly, but pass completion is about the same and goals per game is only a little lower. But what does seem telling is that his passes per game stats have fallen from being consistently just over 33 per game at Villa to 23.3 per game at Liverpool. His dribbles per game have halved from the figures he was achieving at Villa.

That suggests he is playing further up the pitch, hanging around the box rather than dropping deep as he did at Villa. In part that’s a tactical issue; in part it’s simply down to the nature of the clubs. Liverpool are always likely to dominate possession more than Villa; there’s less need to chase long clearances or to pick up the ball in isolation and try to create something. Inevitably his zone of action moves nearer the box.

This is not a unique problem. Joel Campbell, for instance, having looked so impressive leading the line for Costa Rica, hunting lost causes, playing in huge amounts of space, has taken time to adapt to Arsenal, who habitually play with the ball. His touch has looked a little unsophisticated, his movement predictable. But what is significant is that he has improved, and his assist away to Olympiakos was sublime.

Klopp’s sides have never been reliant on possession, nor does he require such subtlety of touch as Arsene Wenger, but if Benteke is to have a future at Liverpool, there needs to be some sort of accommodation found between his natural game and the style Klopp wants to play. At the moment, that isn’t happening, and Benteke, looking increasingly unsure of himself, is in danger of disappearing into another trough like the one he endured after his Achilles injury.

Will Benteke make a success of his Liverpool career? Let us know in the comments below