Is Benteke good enough?

[gkmacca]

Regardless of what system, style, etc, we play, if Benteke approaches a game in the right way, uses his strength, uses his pace, uses his technique, he should, at the very least, cause enough trouble in the opposition area to either score or create a chance for a teammate. As I said before, yes, there can be changes to help him but simply by working harder and thinking more sharply he ought to be upping his performance appreciably. So these games are a real test of his attitude. He seems to be waiting to be prodded into a game plan. He needs to go out there and show what he can do, in any circumstance, with the obvious gifts he has.

 

[mom]

Yeh I would love to see some real grit and aggression on the pitch from him. He comes across as a gentle giant at the moment, which although rather endearing, doesn't really instill the fear in the opposition we need.

 

[beejay]

Strangely he seems to be massively lacking in confidence. He is not doing what he is good at and is not getting into the areas where he can do damage.

There's much more to his game than we have seen, he has scored some spectacular goals with great technique yet has barely a close range finish to his name. And incidentally none of our other strikers have either.

We are all focusing on the strikers but the midfield is the main problem for me, unbalanced and fuck all creativity with no end product

 

[mom]

It's both. Point the fingers at the AMs and they'll say the strikers are shit as they don't make the runs or take up the right spaces.

Point the finger at the strikers and they'll say the AMs don't make the right passes or at the right time.

They need to learn to work together.

they're all capable players, but there's no synergy.

 

[rurikbird]

Brilliant.

I say with those stats, he deserves a chance and time to prove himself. He's no Torres, but he's going to bag a lot of goals for us

I also think it's brilliant, but I didn't come up with "Benchteke" – someone else right after he was signed.

 

[rurikbird]

Lewandowski had 8 goals in 33 league games (1,572 minutes) for Dortmund in his first season there - a goal every 196.5 minutes.
Benteke has 6 goals in 19 league games (1,174 minutes) for Liverpool in his first season here - a goal every 195.6 minutes.

Bendownski.

Not even close. If anyone in the current squad can become the new Lewandowski, it's Origi. Like him, Lewandowski also didn't seem like a natural finisher in his first season, but Klopp kept him consistently in the team (ahead of Lucas Barrios, who was a naturally clinical finisher and Dortmund's top scorer the year before – Barrios was incensed at this treatment and left for some oil-rich Middle Eastern club next summer) because he worked extremely hard for the team, made all the runs he was instructed to make, sought to bring him teammates into play and was eager to learn and absorb Klopp's way of playing.

Benteke's situation is exactly the opposite – he doesn't get consistent playing time despite being our top scorer, he doesn't make enough runs to satisfy Klopp's demands and so far doesn't seem able to learn and adjust. It tells you everything you need to know when a midfielder is preferred ahead of him up top while the other 3 strikers are injured. To make it worse, just the fact that he is being asked to play in a different way and work harder than ever before seems to have affected his confidence so much that he is not able to score 1 on 1 or even faced with an open goal. This is the same malaise that affected Balotelli under Rodgers – actually most strikers are mentally fragile creatures; any dent to their confidence and they struggle. It's a familiar situation and it will end in the same way, unless Benteke turns it around in this 2nd half of the season.

 

[hamstrung_pigeon]

I think the second "n" in "Bendownski" would've been indicative of the (apparently) lousy joke I was trying to make there.