With Benteke I'm just a little surprised sometimes that people's memories are so short. Only two or three months ago he arrived at Liverpool and scored regularly (he's still out top scorer in-fact) and has scored all types of goals for us. there's been towering headers, overhead kicks, tap ins, cool finishes etc. The same type of goals in all honesty that he's scored throughout his career in English football. We aren't talking goals when we're 3-0 up either (that hasn't happened much in truth), we're talking the only goal in 1-0 wins on more than one occasion, goals to bring us back into the game when we're behind etc, goals away from home, you name it.
And now, he's playing sh!te we can all see that. So, has he become a sh!te player overnight? Was he always a sh!te player? Has he got an identical twin brother who is sh!te and has taken his place? What?
Of course some or all of those things above may be true, but perhaps (and I know this is a bit out there but indulge me), just perhaps his sh!teness is temporary? Perhaps there is a chance that one day he won't be sh!te any more? Could it even be that he's lacking in a bit of confidence?
Now if we take the contrary view, my completely outlandish "confidence theory" and reject the "he is just utter sh!te" conclusion, how do we alter the course of his and our season to get him playing well again? THAT is what we ought to be looking at IMHO, and as I've been saying for sometime now, it's not as if when we don't play him or do play him but not to his strengths that we're exactly rattling the goals in.
Yes I'm aware that if we played Norwich every week there wouldn't be too much of an issue, but we've just been through three and a half hours of football, at home, against Stoke and West Ham and haven't scored a goal. Not only have we not scored a goal, but we haven't exactly racked up a string of near misses either. Now I get that we have injuries, lots of games, tired players and the like. I totally get that. But we do have an option to play just a little differently to the way we are too. Perhaps a couple of videos of how Benitez used Peter Crouch might refresh peoples memories a bit (I don't remember Crouchie "running the channels" overly, or being a massively "mobile" front man) or failing that we could just watch a couple of videos of any Aston Villa/Liverpool match over the last three seasons or so. That ought to do it, and it might work.
Please though spare me the "Benteke is sh!te" nonsense, because he's a million miles from that.
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