We’ve Come A Long Way To Benteke

Although the chase has been long and public, the confirmation of the signing of Christian Benteke was a great moment, a big boost after a disappointing start.

I remember the game against Villa two seasons ago when Benteke dispossessed Scott Dann, ran forward and fired a shot into the bottom corner to steal a win.

The guy is a beast, an imposing physical specimen, strong in the air and with good feet as well. His time at Villa suggests he is well suited to a relegation battle, which might come in handy for the next eight months.

But £25million is an extraordinary amount to pay for a single player – it is two and a half times what the whole club was worth when the club was bought out of administration in the summer of 2010.

For those of us remembering the dark days of the Palace line being led by the likes of miserable signings like Tommy Langley, Trevor Aylott and Ian Edwards, it is progress indeed.

But of course we know that expensive splurges on strikers can be fraught with risk. On one hand, the striker may not live up to the billing or his prior reputation. On the other hand, the sheer bad luck of serious injury can result in the same disappointment.

Mike Elwiss was signed by Terry Venables from Preston to join the emerging home-grown players that had won the FA Youth Cup in 1977. He impressed as soon as he arrived but was soon struck down by serious knee injury.

A few years later, we signed Kevin Mabbutt, an exciting young forward from Bristol City, in the hope he would lead us back into the top division – we were the ‘Team of the Eighties’ after all.  Kevin’s chronic knee injuries coincided with the emergence of his younger brother Gary initially a functional defensive midfielder with Bristol Rovers, later an inspiring captain of Tottenham.

Mabbutt and Elwiss were unfortunate and have been looked on more favourably than some as the years have passed.  It is the expensive signings who failed to live up to the fee that inevitably drew scorn at the time and subsequently.

And of course it is a pretty long list.

And we’ll come to Ade Akinbiyi in a moment.

The first expensive disappointment I remember was Mike Flanagan, signed from Charlton after scoring bags of goals in the old Second Division, as well as getting into a fight with strike partner Derek Hales.  He replaced Dave Swindlehurst but was not as quick, not as good in the air and didn’t score as many goals. And he was from Charlton.  And not much missed when he joined the conveyor belt of players who headed for QPR with Terry Venables.

Leicester paid £5.5million for Ade Akinbiyi, a lot more than we did.

We made a loss in selling Marco Gabbiadini, the man with the impossible task of replacing Ian Wright. I maintain that we sold him too quickly and his scoring record wasn’t too bad at all.

A lot of teams kept buying Akinbiyi after we moved him on. I’ve no idea why.

Lee Bradbury, Gareth Taylor and the Hungarian who took his track suit off for games – Sandor Torgelle – were also expensive disappointments, but they didn’t do that silly thing where they put a plus between the 5’s of 55.

There are some “not sures” out there as well. Was Bruce Dyer a success or a failure? Not sure. I quite liked Dele Adebola, James Scowcroft and Andy Preece but they didn’t score enough goals.

Let’s not forget we have had some outstanding signings of forwards over the years.  Mark Bright was signed from Leicester City reserves for £75,000. Dougie Freedman had been a consistent scorer for Barnet in the fourth tier and was a risky signing for £200,000. Andy Johnson was a makeweight in a deal that took Clinton Morrison to Birmingham.

We have made a few other smart signings of players who didn’t stay for long but made an impact – Chris Armstrong had his best days in a Palace shirt, as did the wonderful Matt Jansen in a career that was much too short.

Neil Shipperley had a long career with a number of clubs, but did he ever score a more important goal than the play off final winner in 2004? If we are talking play off finals, it was only three years since Kevin Phillips’ heroic spell that secured promotion, after Glenn Murray had been injured.

Even Alan Lee, a very limited player, scored a massive goal in that epic survival game at Hillsborough in 2010.

I want to see Benteke scoring bullet headers like Lee that day as well as repeating solo goals like the one he scored against us.

But I don’t want a silly plus sign on the back of his shirt.