Liverpool seal Benteke deal

“But until that happens he is an Aston Villa player and we are all very pleased about that”.

Attention will now shift to sales, with Liverpool having several players they wish to offload, particularly Fabio Borini, Mario Balotelli and Jose Enrique, who were not included in the pre-season tour.

With Suarez, Sterling, Gerrard all gone to different clubs and Daniel Sturridge- unable to shake off injury woes, Liverpool are back in the market and buying players who can’t replace all 4 players mentioned above.

Having plundered 101 league goals in 2013/14, that tally slumped to 52 in 2014/15 but Rodgers has since overhauled his attacking options.

He added: “We are only 12 days into it [the club’s pre-season], but the quality of the work in the training and in the games has been exceptional”. If their fans get carried away with the potential signing of a player like Christian Benteke in the run up to the 2015/16 campaign without enough solid defensive strengthening, the immediate outcome will likely prove successful, but the long-term effect could be disastrous.

Liverpool met the £32.5m release fee clause last Thursday in Benteke’s contract and the two Premier League clubs have been in talks over the weekend over the finer details of the Belgium international’s transfer. The Belgian attacker has scored 42 goals in the past three seasons for Villa.

Among them, Benteke is unique, with a lot of facets to his game. In fact I would have paid a bit more for him because I think he’s that good.

That’s because it has dribbled repeatedly from the mouths of dead-eyed ex-pros in the Sky Sports studio and seeped into the everyday footballing lexicon.

It’s worth remembering that the forward has been the glue holding Villa’s feeble attempts to retain Premier League status for some time.

A most surprising stat which gives insight into the Belgian’s excellent hold-up play and distribution from the front.

“It is all down to the staff and manager who picks the side”.

Benteke has scored in 10 different formations since arriving in the Premier League.

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All great sagas must come to a close one day.

Liverpool, however, are often very narrow and their wingers tend to drift inside rather than offer genuine width and a plentiful supply of crosses. Brendan Rodgers has been an admirer of Benteke for quite a while.

Liverpool absolutely struggled for goals from their strikers last season, after Luis Surez’s £75 million move to Barcelona.

It is the signing of Benteke that is meant to solve the major problem of last season – goal-scoring.