The Problem With Jerry

The sad but stark truth is that Jerry Bengtson, out and out striker for the New England Revolution, who has started six games and played over 500 minutes this year, has only scored one goal. That alone is reason enough to bench him, but add to the fact that he seems out of sync with his teammates and one step behind the general play and you have more than enough reason to look for different options.

To be fair, this is not at all different from his efforts last year -two goals in 13 games-but that does little to take away from the fact that it's an abysmal return for a striker who, to be honest, gets his fair chances to finish and more often than not, doesn't have the composure or finishing ability to collect the rewards.

Strikers are rightfully judged by goals but in some cases, you can turn a blind eye to the lack of goals if the player happens to contribute to the general play and records assists. That's once again not the case with Jerry, and this is not at all to be unfairly critical of him as the whole team has suffered, but during these trying time, the team needs someone to take charge -make something out of nothing-and Jerry does not look qualified for the position.

The deception of course comes in the form of his scoring rate for the Honduras national team where he has scored 16 goals in 33 games, a great return that comes out to almost a goal every two games. But he is not the first and certainly won't be the last player that plays better for country than club and it would be unfair-unreasonable-- to expect him to always transfer his national team form to The Revs.

So unless we all gather in a concentrated effort and scatter some Higueras into the waters around New England and transport over 630 species of orchids (seriously, there are 630 different types of orchids) to the training grounds and start doing mock Feria Juniana celebrations then the best option now would be sadly, a new option at striker.

The change needs not be permanent as many of us still regard Jerry as a good player who will gets his goals in time, but since this season's successes -in terms of playoffs-is unfortunately out of reach, it might be time to try new things. With nothing to essentially lose here, maybe trying out Imbongo, who has a better history and seems to be much more assertive than Jerry, in the striker position. And when Sene is fully fit, then we can see how these new formations and pairings work, hopefully yielding better results than our current one.

The problem is that there needs to be a solution to this striker issue soon, if not for the sole purpose of having a decent goal return then for the US Open Cup which can be won. There is still hope for a successful season for both the team and Jerry, but maybe what is needed right now is a break, the player could use the benching as motivation for improvement and the team could use the time to work out new formulas for attack. There's really no way to essentially lose In this one.