Former Aston Villa manager Tim Sherwood has bizarrely claimed he tried to talk Liverpool out of signing Christian Benteke by telling Reds boss Brendan Rodgers how bad the Belgian was.
The striker joined Liverpool in the summer of 2015 after they activated his £32.5m release clause, having been a constant thorn in the Reds’ defence even since first moving to England in 2012 and scored five goals for Aston Villa in six appearances against his future employers.
Boasting 49 goals in 101 appearances for Villa, Benteke had been a revelation at Villa Park. And with the striker key to Sherwood’s plans, he’s revealed how he failed to talk Liverpool out of signing the Belgian.
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“They (Villa) decided to get rid of Benteke and he was key for me,” he said on the No Tippy Tappy Football Podcast, in association with William Hill. “He had the buyout clause and Brendan Rodgers rang me up and told me he would take him.
“I tried to talk him out of it and say how bad Christian was and that he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. Obviously he decided that Christian was his choice.”
Sherwood would ultimately be proven right about Benteke at Anfield after he lasted just one season at Liverpool. While he would start the season as first-choice under Rodgers, a thigh injury soon sidelined him, with Jurgen Klopp having taken over as manager by the time of his return.
While he would register 10 goals and five assists in 42 appearances for Liverpool, it soon became clear he wasn’t part of the German’s plans and he was sold to Crystal Palace for £32m after just one season.
Meanwhile, Sherwood was sacked in October 2015, three weeks after Rodgers’ own Anfield dismissal, following Villa’s poor start to the season. The club were 19th at the time of his exit and would suffer relegation at the end of the campaign, ruing Benteke’s exit as, without his goals, they finished bottom with just 17 points.
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