I can exactly predict how the first half of this season is going to go.
- Rodgers will start with a Coutinho-Benteke-Firmino front three for the most part. Ings and Origi, who fit our style perfectly, will be reduced to frustrating appearances off the bench.
- Half the team (Sakho, Can, Coutinho, Allen, Milner) will try and play the way Rodgers has been telling them to play for the last 2-3 years. Keep the ball on the ground, use speed of thought, skill and movement to break the opposition down. The other half (mostly Skrtel, Henderson and Moreno) will see Benteke as an excuse to frequently lump the ball forward. The attack as a whole will suffer from lack of cohesion. This will in turn put pressure on the midfield (which will continue without a DM) and defence, and we'll continue to leak goals like last season.
- Coutinho will have no runners for his forward passes while Benteke will throw his hands up when he sees no runners picking up his flick-ons. Half this forum (I'm looking especially at @
Fabio here) will say this is because Coutinho's game isn't complete enough. He's too much style, too little substance. Doesn't make any runs into the box. Sterling really was a better player. He's good but not good enough for Barca or Brazil yet.
- Firmino will spend all this time wondering whether he should be a runner or whether he should be getting on the ball to try and make the team play. He'll show flashes of brilliance but will ultimately not show the return that we expected. Half the forum will say he's our Lamela.
- Come September, we'll have Sturridge come back. Rodgers will bring in him for a game against Villa (benching Benteke after a 5 game goalless streak). Coutinho, Firmino and Sturridge will produce the best performance of the season. We'll score 4-5. People will hail Firmino as a brilliant attacking talent and berate those who made the Lamela comparisons. Sturridge will get injured the next week putting an end to all the new found optimism.
- Benteke will come back, and continue to produce sporadically. He'll get about 1 in 3/4 - his combination of physical attributes is too good for him to be a complete dud like Mario. Rodgers will continue to persist with him, and by December, he'll have scored about 7 goals. Not a terrible return, which will prompt half the forum to defend him. He works his socks off. It's not his fault we paid 32.5 million for him. It's really the likes of Coutinho and Firmino who've struggled to raise their games.
- Rodgers will sit around why we aren't dicking teams while we'll be sitting in 6th or 7th place. He'll then have to figure out whether to bench Benteke for the more suited Ings or Origi to help scramble a 4th place finish in the second half of the season. Or ask the owners for more funds, or continue to persist with Benteke.
Good times.
