Christian Benteke's Liverpool Move Puts Brendan Rodgers' System in the Spotlight

Sometimes the fixture list can seem to have a mischievous sense of humour. Liverpool start their new campaign at Stoke City, where they ended last season with a 6-1 defeat. The result would have been shameful even had it not been Steven Gerrard’s last game for the club, as inappropriate a farewell as it’s possible to imagine.

The positive is that ghosts can be laid swiftly to rest: There is an immediate opportunity for Liverpool to take the match that became emblematic of their fragility last season and show that things will be different this season. Christian Benteke’s first competitive game for the club might become every bit as resonant as Gerrard’s last.

But how different will this season be?

On the face of it, this summer has presented very similar challenges to the last. One major attacking player has gone for a vast sum, and there have been a raft of new arrivals.

Last year, after the sale of Luis Suarez for £75 million, Liverpool spent £106 million bringing in nine new players. Only Emre Can really impressed, even if there were flashes of promise from Lazar Markovic, who turned 21 in March.

This summer, £49 million (or, more accurately, £42 million perhaps rising to £49 million, 20 per cent of which went to Queens Park Rangers) came in for Raheem Sterling and a total £76 million has been spent on eight new players.

Of those, the most expensive and controversial is Benteke, who cost £32.5 million from Aston Villa. There seems to be some scepticism about him from certain sections of Liverpool’s support, but that is a little surprising.

The 24-year-old has consistently scored goals: 19 in 27 league starts for Racing Genk, then 42 in 82 league starts for Aston Villa, at a time when they were the dourest side in the league. And that includes a period of a year in which he scored only two league goals when he was out with and then recovering from an Achilles injury.

Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press

Last season, Benteke scored 13 league goals, making him the ninth top scorer in the Premier League. That record is more impressive than it seems because only two of the players who scored more than him started fewer games, and those 13 goals were out of an overall Villa total of just 31.

He also, according to stats from WhoScored.com, recorded 1.1 key passes a game, which isn’t a huge figure, but only Eden Hazard, Alexis Sanchez and Diego Costa both played more key passes and scored more goals.

But it’s perhaps Benteke’s greatest strength that raises the greatest questions. He won 6.5 aerial duels per game last season—1.7 more than any other player. Benteke has, apparently, been a target of Brendan Rodgers for some time, but he doesn’t seem an obvious fit for what has, up till now, been his preferred style of play. After all, one of Rodgers’ first acts as Liverpool manager was to offload Andy Carroll because he couldn’t see how the giant centre-forward could fit into his system.

Benteke is not Carroll—he is far more mobile and far less injury-prone—but still, if Liverpool are to make the most of his greatest asset, it will require another change of approach.

In Rodgers’ first season at Anfield, Liverpool were a heavily possession-oriented team. In his second season, thanks to the pace of Suarez, Daniel Sturridge and Sterling, they were far more direct. In his third season, they were somewhere in-between, at their most effective in that middle portion of the campaign when they played a 3-4-2-1. This season, well, what?

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Rodgers has options and is a regular tinkerer. He could play Sturridge and Benteke (or Danny Ings) together as a front two, but the squad looks set up to play either a 4-2-3-1, a 4-3-3 or, perhaps, a 4-3-2-1.

The great strength of the 3-4-2-1 used last season was the way Philippe Coutinho in particular, but also Adam Lallana, Sterling and Markovic, thrived in what were essentially old-fashioned inside-forward roles, operating in those awkward pockets between the opponent’s central defenders, full-backs and holding midfielders.

A 4-3-2-1 would allow them still to do that, but with an orthodox back four and Can used as a midfielder rather than as an auxiliary centre-back. Sterling is gone, but Roberto Firmino is a tactically intelligent player who can play either wide or centrally, and the 19-year-old Jordon Ibe has emerged as a genuine candidate to be a first-team regular.

Two immediate issues present themselves, both related to the potential narrowness of a 4-3-2-1.

The first, which Liverpool handled well last season with a similar shape at the top end of the pitch, was that the opposing full-backs can be left unchecked to surge forward. It’s essential that whoever plays in the two can pull wide to prevent that.

There’s also, and this is perhaps the bigger worry after Benteke’s arrival, a potential lack of attacking width and thus a danger of a lack of crosses. Of course, the two attacking midfielders can simply pull wider—the distinction between 4-3-3 and 4-3-2-1 can at times be academic—but now that Sterling has left the club, there is no established natural winger. All of the Reds' attacking midfielders are multi-faceted, versatile players, but all of them would naturally cut infield from wide positions.

Width could come from the full-backs pushing forward; in which case Can, if he plays at the back of the midfield, may at times become effectively the third centre-back he was so often last season, but there’s a certain irony in the fact that two of Liverpool’s best crossers of the ball, Jordan Henderson and James Milner, look likely to be used as central midfield pistons.

Perhaps that, though, is to take too straightforward a view of how Rodgers intends to use Benteke. The fact tha you have a target man doesn’t mean your game has to be based around crosses. What Benteke offers is an early outlet from the back—he can hold the ball up and proved adept at working shooting opportunities last season despite the poverty of the service he received—and he will pose a major threat from set plays.

Firmino is a major signing, and Liverpool need at least half of those eight players who arrived to settle and be playing well by Christmas if their recruitment policy is to have any credibility. But Benteke seems the key. The two forwards who arrived last summer, Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert, scored three goals between them. However they play, Liverpool need Benteke to fire.