Christian Benteke: Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson says ‘no magic solution’ to striker’s form
Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson has admitted striker Christian Benteke’s confidence is low as his poor goalscoring record continues.
The Belgium international arrived at Palace in a £32m deal from Liverpool three seasons ago, but, after a prolific first campaign, he has struggled to find the net for the Eagles.
The 28-year-old missed a fantastic opportunity to seal the victory in Palace’s last-gasp 1-1 draw with Wolves on Sunday, leaving him goalless for the season and with just four goals in his last 52 Premier League appearances.
Hodgson said: „We cannot do more than we have been doing for a long period of time because unfortunately his confidence hasn’t been at the highest level because he hasn’t scored the goals that he wants to score, and the club want him to score.
„But we work very hard with him to make certain that he realises there’s other aspects of his game that we appreciate and we still want him to give us every time he plays.
„We try and encourage him to keep getting into goalscoring positions and to keep looking to get his shots away. We believe that for strikers there will be a moment where it turns for them, but again, there’s no magic word or no magic solution to that.
„We can’t change the fact that over the last two years since I’ve been at the club, his goalscoring record has been very, very poor.
„It’s not because he doesn’t try hard enough. It’s not because he doesn’t want to score goals badly. It just is a rut that he finds himself in and we’re working hard with him on the training field to try and help him to get out of it.“
Despite Benteke’s goalscoring woes, he continues to get considerable game time as the Eagles have a lack of recognised strikers in their squad after Michy Batshuayi’s loan expired in the summer.
When asked if Palace will persist with Benteke as a goalscoring option, Hodgson replied: „We don’t have too much choice do we?
„The fact is if we had six or seven forwards I suppose it might be quite tough for him because he might be seeing one or two people pass him in the pecking order.
„Obviously he doesn’t attempt to deny and we cannot deny that we need goals in our team and he hasn’t been able to provide them.
„At the moment there’s only him and Jordan Ayew so we don’t have an awful lot of options.
„We’d like to score more but we’ve not been a prolific goalscoring team in these two years but everybody who watches us regularly understands that apart from a brief period where we had Batshuayi on loan we haven’t really had someone who is a renowned goalscorer in the team.“
Palace will come up against one of the Premier League’s in-form strikers in Teemu Pukki on Saturday when they host Norwich at Selhurst Park, as they look for a second home win of the season.Soccer Accumulator Bonus
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