What Changed At Bayer Leverkusen?
After the sale of Josip Drmic and Heung-min Son at the start of the 2015/16 season, Leverkusen needed to acquire the services of a quality striker as their loyal servant Stefan Kiessling was not getting any younger. This led Leverkusen to pursue Hernandez until the very end, all along assuring the Mexican of a regular starting place in the squad.
The 27-year-old striker has been thriving in the Leverkusen system under Roger Schmidt. Schmidt employs a counter-pressing tactic with his Leverkusen team, encouraging his players to win the ball back in the attacking half of the pitch.
This tactic helps Chicharito more than anyone else on the pitch as he is always on the prowl, waiting for an incisive pass from his teammates, going shoulder-to-shoulder with the defenders and, more often than not, getting the better of an unsuspecting defender to go clean through on goal.
Although the 32-year-old Kiessling has slowed down in the past couple of seasons, he has been extremely influential in Chicharito's rise this season as his movement in the attacking third draws defenders away and creates space for the Mexican to work around.
More than anything else, the main reason for Chicharito's great run of form is the simple fact that he gets to start more matches than remain on the bench, like he did at Real Madrid and Manchester United. With two more months to go in the season, he has already started more games at Bayer than he did at United in a season.
Known primarily as a super-sub within the Man United fan community, he is well on his way to becoming a hero at Bayer after having scored 23 goals from 30 games in all competitions (as of date). Chicharito is the third highest goalscorer in the Bundesliga with 14 goals, only behind Robert Lewandowski, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Thomas Muller.
When comparing Chicharito's rate of scoring at Man United and Leverkusen, we see that the Mexican striker's rate of scoring at the German club is two times better than what his rate was at United. Scoring 59 goals in 157 matches, Hernandez scored one goal every 2.6 matches.
On the other hand, Hernandez's rate of scoring at Leverkusen is one goal in every 1.3 games. In the EPL, Chicharito scored a goal every 130 minutes while in the Bundesliga, he has scored a goal every 112 minutes.
Chicharito never won any League Player-of-the-Month awards at Man United, but, at Leverkusen, the striker was named the Player-of-the-Month three times for the months of November 2015, December 2015, and January 2016.
Goals are a consequence of regular playing time: Hernandez
In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Chicharito's response to what caused his turn of form at Leverkusen was that a player needed to play more in order to regain confidence, more than just a positive mindset.
“I don’t know because I don’t have a written statement or something that can tell you what you need to do to be a fantastic player or to keep that confidence. Sometimes it’s just that you are playing a lot. What I was missing in the last two or three years, it was like I was playing sometimes and then returning to the bench.
“But now that I am playing most of the game or almost all of my games here in my club, that’s what I need, the rhythm, that confidence. Because people sometimes think the confidence is with goals, but I don’t think like that. I think confidence is to play day-by-day to get rhythm. The goals is a consequence,” Chicharito said.
When Leverkusen travel to Villareal to play the first leg of the Round of 16 tie of the Europa League on Thursday, Chicharito will be looking to carry on what he has been doing all season and help his side qualify for the next round of the tournament. If Man United win against Liverpool, then there is a possibility of a reunion on the cards for Chicharito.
What Hernandez tells about needing to play more rather than play occasionally, despite having a good mindset, is key to a player's form on the field. Maybe Louis van Gaal, David Moyes, and Sir Alex, to an extent, should have taken the gamble of persisting with Chicharito as a regular starter and bore the fruits of patience.
