After a lot of ifs, buts and maybes, Belgian striker Christian Benteke has finally joined Crystal Palace.
He has signed a four year deal at Selhurst Park for a fee £27million which could increase to £32million due to add ons included in the deal.
Born in Zaire, Benteke spent time in the youth teams at JS Pierreuse, Standard Liege and Genk. It was at Genk where he made his professional debut but only managed ten appearances and a single goal before returning to Liege. He found it difficult to secure a regular starting place and after loan spells at Kortrijk and Mechelen he re-signed for Genk.
Following an excellent season at the Cristal Arena, Aston Villa secured his signature in 2012 for a fee believed to be in the region of £7million. In his time at Villa Park, the six foot, three inch tall striker scored forty-two goals in eighty-nine appearances. A move to Anfield followed last summer and while much of the media have deemed it unsuccessful, Benteke still managed nine goals in twenty-nine appearances.
The new Palace signing has appeared for Belgium at under 17, 18, 19 and 21 levels and has twenty-six full international caps to date, scoring six goals.
We wanted to find out more about the twenty-five year old so we asked David Michael at the excellent Aston Villa fan group My Old Man Said about his time at Villa Park.
MY OLD MAN SAID
Benteke is actually underrated by football at large. At Villa, he was on the way to being a proper world class striker. Unfortunately, Villa had an owner who was largely clueless on how to run a football club. Villa should have invested in a team around him, rather than cutting corners all the time. If Villa had had the Belgian four or five seasons earlier, they would have reached the Champions League instead of finishing sixth for three seasons on the trot.
There seems to be a lazy appraisal of Benteke by most pundits, who think he is the typical ‘big man’ up front. He actually has great touch and awareness in passing and link-up play, that I am surprised he did not end up at Arsenal, as the final piece to the jigsaw.
The question marks over him are that he picks up injuries and is also prone to mood swings during games. If he is fired up, he is unstoppable, if he is not, he can sulk on the pitch.
His agent has not helped him and probably given him ideas above his station. Palace though maybe getting a player that has learnt a few lessons after injury made him miss the World Cup and he was not picked to start during the Euros. An ego that was building should have been deflated, especially after Liverpool not working out for him.
The whole fallacy of Benteke not being suited to Liverpool’s way is rubbish, they just did not utilise him well or maybe it was his attitude let him down. The good news is, if he cannot play for Liverpool, he is very good when it comes to playing against them. He would terrorise them when he played for Villa. In fact, they became one of the only teams we could beat regularly!
