Aston Villa vs Liverpool: Christian Benteke grateful to Tim Sherwood for putting fire back in his belly

The striker is back amongst the goals and ready for his side's FA Cup semi-final at Wembley

Christian Benteke says it was the right decision for Villa to sack Paul Lambert for Tim Sherwood (Getty)

It was uttered in a surprisingly soft voice rather than an intimidating growl but it will have been music to the ears of Aston Villa supporters.

It was an answer to the question whether defenders were finally fearing him again and Christian Benteke’s simple one-word answer – “Yeah” – underlined not just why Villa might fancy their chances of surprising Liverpool in this weekend's FA Cup semi-final, but also Tim Sherwood’s single biggest contribution so far as manager of the Birmingham club.

One of Sherwood’s first pledges in his opening press conference was to bring Benteke “back to life” just as he had done with Emmanuel Adebayor at Tottenham, and the 24-year-old this week paid credit to his new manager for the part he has played in restoring his confidence, as well as voicing the belief that Villa were right to sack his predecessor, Paul Lambert.

However, the problem with Benteke’s hot streak is that it has raised fresh questions about his future, just as happened after his first 23-goal season in England. The man himself, who has two years left on his contract, suggested that he might want “after five or six years” to be with a “big club”, adding: “The first thing now is to be safe [from relegation] and then go on holiday because it is a long time since I have been on holiday. After that, we will see what happens.”

In the meantime, he is happy that Sherwood has helped him get his goalscoring touch back. “The thing is, maybe he has given me a lot of freedom and he has said to the other lads to play maybe more direct with me,” Benteke said. “When a manager says that, you feel more important, more responsible.

“He saw that we needed to play more straight [up the pitch] because even if I wasn’t scoring, we weren’t getting in shots on target [as a team]. We weren’t scoring goals, so now it’s a bit different.

“He says to the lads, ‘You have to play more forward, with Gabby [Agbonlahor]. You have to use our strengths’. It’s simple.”

Benteke was dropped to the bench for the final two matches of Paul Lambert’s reign but Sherwood, after talks with the striker, has reignited the fire in a player who has now got eight goals in his last six matches.

Hence the fact Benteke, while grateful to Lambert for bringing him to England from Genk in 2012, believes the decision to sack him has paid off. “The confidence of the team was a little bit low and when he [Sherwood] came, he brought the confidence up so I would say yes.”

Benteke in person is more youthful and less intimidating than his on-field presence would suggest and his absence from last summer’s World Cup finals with Belgium with a ruptured Achilles was “tough”. “The first game was hard, yes,” he said, recalling watching the match back in Liège with his family.

If reaching the FA Cup final will help “a little bit” to make up for that disappointment, it felt a remote prospect when he returned to a struggling Villa side in October, short of match fitness after a six-month lay-off and dispirited “to play a game with no chances”.

Such is his confidence now, by contrast, that he completed his hat-trick against Queen’s Park Rangers 10 days ago with his first free-kick goal in England – only the second he had ever taken for Villa. “I was surprised myself! When I saw it, Charles N’Zogbia said, ‘I want to shoot’ but I said, ‘No, no, I will take it’.”

He will be at the front of the queue for any free-kicks at Wembley and after four goals in five appearances against Liverpool, he speaks with icy conviction when asked if he is dreaming about getting another at Wembley: “Not dreaming – I want to do it.”