this is where i might get blasted from some but there you go - Hendo - as a captain running the team, vocal, calm and composed he ticks all the boxes... but im not entirly sure what his other strengths are. he doesn't take free kicks, doesn't take pens, he's no alonso in his passing cos a lot of them are squared to the midfield or defence. His goal tally for liverpool is poor for a midfielder.
I'll bite.
Actually his passing forward is great, he's played some sublime laser guided passes over the past 12 months but he doesn't do it every game so it gets forgotten. It also gets forgotten in the noise of his annoying tendancy not to go for the forward option but turn back towards his own goal, the Leicester goal being a pretty text-book example of this.
What you need in our set-up is a pivot behind the other 2 CMs and, for the most part, he does that pretty well, but it does mean he's not the guy running into the box from CM to score. He's also not our best FK or Pen taker so you don't see him as being an asset there.
Maybe his strongest attribute is that he's vocal, calm & (mostly) composed)? He runs all day and, while his highlight reel may not be the best, he does almost everything to a sustained high level of performance. Maybe his highlight reel is those times he cuts off passing lanes and forces opponents to stop and chose other options. That's nothing fancy but essential to our way of playing.
I think that he's got more competition in CM this season than he's ever had at the club and he has to show that he has an extra dimension to his game that sets him aside from Gini, Milner, Keita, Fabinho, AOC. I assume Fabinho not playing is because Klopp thinks he's not ready yet, Gini & Milner are quickly being the 2 to beat and Keita, for all his ability has yet to dominate a game from CM which is probably why Hendo, when he's fit, is still getting a game in that last slot. Maybe the first couple of games were WC hangover and it was always his place to lose? Maybe Klopp decided that Hendo's physical presence was preferable to Keita's guile against Leicester and he'll revert against Spurs?
Personal take for tomorrow: Gini & Milner are locks for me. Spurs pressing means you can't have your pivot being slow to move the ball on and you need someone with an eye to beat the press. This game is tailor made for Keita. The rest of the team picks itself.