Christian Benteke Can Bring Liverpool out from Luis Suarez's Shadow

Last season was a major disappointment for Liverpool, verging on a disaster. Vast quantities were spent on signings who never lived up to their exorbitant fees. Unrest grew around manager Brendan Rodgers' future. Their long-awaited return to the top table of European football ended in ignominious fashion.

One of the root causes for this dramatic drop-off was the slapdash, punch-drunk manner in which the team attempted to counter the loss of Luis Suarez and the verve and energy he offered as a crucial tenet of their tactical system.

In the 2013/14 season, in which Liverpool narrowly missed out on the title, they combined a strict demarcation between attacking and defensively minded players, with a flexibility and interchangeability between players within these two philosophies.

Suarez was deployed along with Daniel Sturridge, Raheem Sterling and Philippe Coutinho in either an attacking three or with a lone striker supported by three attacking midfielders. The upshot of this blurring of roles and attempts to overwhelm the opposition was that it required all participants to operate at an extremely high work rate.

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Last season, with Suarez gone and Sturridge missing the majority of the campaign through injury, Rodgers was forced to play with round pegs in square holes, most notably Mario Balotelli.

There has been considerable speculation about how Christian Benteke, signed for a major £32.5 million fee from Aston Villa, will fit into this system. However, with Sterling now also absent from the 2013/14 team, the question should be not how Benteke will be incorporated, but what new system the Reds will adopt around the Belgian target man.

While formations can remain the same, the philosophies which govern the team's overall methods of attack, defence, passing and just about everything else related to their overall style will need to be adapted. Liverpool's failure to do so last season was what ultimately cost them.

The signing of Benteke and the sale of Sterling signals the fact that Rodgers has arrived at this realisation.

Liverpool fans will miss the system that came so close to bringing them the title in such spectacular fashion two seasons ago, but the issue with such a system is that without some truly remarkable talent—and the astronomical transfer fees associated with such players—it's extremely difficult to maintain consistency.

Signing Benteke along with players such as James Milner shows a more pragmatic approach than the one Liverpool pursued last summer. Now Rodgers must reflect this change of tack in his tactics.