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Christian Benteke

He's not worth £25m to us but he's absolutely worth that to Villa. Realistically, without his goals next season, they could be relegated. They would have been if not for his goals last season. I'm amazed Villa will entertain offers at all to be honest.

Correct. This is why buying players in the PL are always overpriced,bar the odd exception. Premier League clubs are very wealthy, and don't really need to sell unlike clubs in Spain etc so if you want to purchase a player you're going to have to pay over the odds...
 
last 10 or so pages of this thread has been excellent debate/reading. proper passionate stuff and reasoned arguments....great stuff.

With Benteke he is a villa player and they can value him how they like...whether we think that's unrealistic or not doesn't matter - same applies with Bale and interest from toadface.

But yeah I love the buying a bottle of water in the desert analogy........and we defo need to pull out all the stops that is financially doable to ensure we don't miss an opportunity to break into the elite and end up in a few years in mid table looking back at what might have been.

Bale is defo the best player we have had since hoddle...... modric, Ginola, Berba, Gazza klinsmann all class but the boy Bale is just something else...........one season left of bale!!!!!!!=DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO ADD QUALITY AROUND HIM.
 
We are not in a desert there is a café or a pub or a supermarket on every corner. Do we want Waitrose prices or Lidl prices?
Water is water.
 
Although with regards to Gareth Bale it is.

2bh, Bale will be off regardless of CL football next season or not if his star remains on the rise at its current rate.

You think that just because we happen to scrape into the top 4 that he'd hang around when he could be winning trophies?

I think the only thing that would convince him to stay for anything other than the short-term would be a genuine tilt at the title (i.e. still in with a shout come the business end of the season in April/May) and probably a cup win thrown into the bargain.
 
It's his last chance to go to a WC (or even international tournament as he'll be 33 at the next Euros). He has to be an undesputed starter for someone this season.

I don't see why, the strikers ahead of him in the England pecking order are automatic starters for their clubs.
 
He's not worth £25m to us but he's absolutely worth that to Villa. Realistically, without his goals next season, they could be relegated. They would have been if not for his goals last season. I'm amazed Villa will entertain offers at all to be honest.

Yes, but they survived by "just" managing to score enough, the true issue is their defense is a disaster and they need to invest there heavily.

It's all about risk management, i.e. would they be better off selling a player who wants to leave quickly (for a reasonable price), investing in some defensive capability, or try to play the same cards as last season (which barely got them out alive), and pray Benteke doesn't get injured for any significant part of the season.

Again, not saying they should sell to us for 15M, but Villa does have some decisions to make, and it's not as simple as "they can name any price they want"
 
Yes, but they survived by "just" managing to score enough, the true issue is their defense is a disaster and they need to invest there heavily.

It's all about risk management, i.e. would they be better off selling a player who wants to leave quickly (for a reasonable price), investing in some defensive capability, or try to play the same cards as last season (which barely got them out alive), and pray Benteke doesn't get injured for any significant part of the season.

Again, not saying they should sell to us for 15M, but Villa does have some decisions to make, and it's not as simple as "they can name any price they want"

They've already strengthened, though. Jores Okore is a highly rated young defender they've brought in, as is Antonio Luna. Leandro Bacuna and Aleksandr Tonev are pacy, direct midfielders, and Helenius is a tall yet reasonably skillful forward. They've bought well, and I imagine selling Benteke wouldn't make much sense given that they've already invested in building a team around him that is more solid, more skillful and more direct than last season's was.
 
Yes, but they survived by "just" managing to score enough, the true issue is their defense is a disaster and they need to invest there heavily.

It's all about risk management, i.e. would they be better off selling a player who wants to leave quickly (for a reasonable price), investing in some defensive capability, or try to play the same cards as last season (which barely got them out alive), and pray Benteke doesn't get injured for any significant part of the season.

Again, not saying they should sell to us for 15M, but Villa does have some decisions to make, and it's not as simple as "they can name any price they want"

Couldn't a very similar argument be made about us and Bale? We had great results, but mainly thanks to his individual brilliance.

All about risk management, better off selling and investing in several good players around the pitch, or do we try to play the same cards as last season and pray Bale doesn't get injured for a significant part of the season?

I don't Villa are experiencing any immediate financial difficulties, like us they can strengthen without selling their best player and doing so might be better as it allows them to keep their best player.

They obviously can't name their price as we most likely won't pay the prices they would name if they tried that. But as long as Benteke doesn't create too many problems for them beyond his transfer request they are in a pretty strong negotiating position with 3 years left on his contract and in a solid enough financial position themselves.
 
There's gifs of Ronaldo falling over the ball after attempting stepovers as well as RVP swinging at thin air missing the ball entirely then ending up on his arse, should we not sign them given the opportunity?

I'm fairly on the fence with this one, we should not buy a player for 20m+ when he moved for 6m the last year, that kind of transfer makes it apparent that our scouting team weren't up to scratch, should be able to find our own benteke, or just any fudging striker for the love of GHod. Do think the Belgian would make a great addition to our squad but at 20m any player should. Either come to an agreement with Villa that works for both parties or move on to other targets.

Aston Villa manager Paul Lambert has revealed he only came across striker Christian Benteke by chance.

The Belgium forward has proved a sensation since arriving at Villa Park last summer for £7million, scoring 15 goals in a struggling side this season.

However, it was not the 22-year-old who Lambert initially wanted to watch when he headed out to Genk on a scouting mission.

Ahead of the visit of Premier League champions Emirates Marketing Project tonight, the Scot said: ‘We signed him because I thought we needed a striker like him at the club. I felt we needed a targetman so we looked around and saw Christian playing at Genk.

‘He actually played with a strike partner that we looked at beforehand. We were looking across several different leagues at people but went back to watch Christian again and things moved from there.’

Lambert admitted Benteke’s form had proved one of few highlights of the campaign so far for third-bottom, who would move out of the relegation zone if they avoid defeat against City this evening.

‘We watched him more and one of the scouts saw him playing for Belgium and we decided to take a chance. Nobody really knew too much about him before he arrived but since he has, I think his performances have been exceptional,’ added Lambert.

And Lambert made a staunch defence of his policy of blooding Villa youngsters this season, despite their lowly position and a record of just one win league win in 2013 so far.

‘You know when you bring in young players they don’t have a fear or feel the pressure as much as when they get a bit older,’ he explained.

‘I don’t have a problem playing young players at all, if you’re good enough then I’ll throw you in, everyone has to have an opportunity to perform.’

The Villa boss believes his men have been hard done by as they have plunged towards the foot of the table, exiting both cup competitions at the hands of lower-league opposition along the way.

‘I think we should have more points than we do because we played well in some games and came away with nothing. We’ve also been leading by two goals in some games but still couldn’t see it through,’ the 43-year-old insisted.


http://metro.co.uk/2013/03/04/paul-lambert-admits-aston-villa-came-across-striker-christian-benteke-by-chance-3524970/
 
blundered across him.......well financially it should work out well for them.

really hope Baldi can find us a few gems...
 
I imagine the striker they were initially looking at was Jelle Vossen, another young Belgian who has 78 goals in 148 appearances for Genk
 
I imagine the striker they were initially looking at was Jelle Vossen, another young Belgian who has 78 goals in 148 appearances for Genk

I admire your dedication to this forum mate but seriously you cannot expect people to believe you have such extensive player knowledge...if you did you should be employed as a scout by now!
Why not just post "Looking on google it seems his partner was blah blah bla" Otherwise it comes across as you trying to seem more knowledgable then you are.
 
2bh, Bale will be off regardless of CL football next season or not if his star remains on the rise at its current rate.

You think that just because we happen to scrape into the top 4 that he'd hang around when he could be winning trophies?


I think the only thing that would convince him to stay for anything other than the short-term would be a genuine tilt at the title (i.e. still in with a shout come the business end of the season in April/May) and probably a cup win thrown into the bargain.

Well he wants to win proper trophies he wont go to Real Madrid then
 
I imagine the striker they were initially looking at was Jelle Vossen, another young Belgian who has 78 goals in 148 appearances for Genk

Couldn't we just buy him then instead of Benteke? Probably completely different players, but as I can't be arsed to look him up and don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of minor European leagues, you would have thought our scouts could do their job. It's not as though we don't have any Belgians knocking around the place who, if they saw someone pretty good in the national setup, couldn't mention it at the club is it?
 
It ain't easy to decide successfully whether a player good at one club or league would repeat his form at or in another. In fact it is incredibly difficult.
 
I admire your dedication to this forum mate but seriously you cannot expect people to believe you have such extensive player knowledge...if you did you should be employed as a scout by now!
Why not just post "Looking on google it seems his partner was blah blah bla" Otherwise it comes across as you trying to seem more knowledgable then you are.

when did I say i've ever heard of him? I simply looked at the genk team to see who they could have been looking at and saw a player named Jelle Vossen and then posted his stats as a reason why they were probably looking at him :s

the only time i ever watche Belgian football was when Lukaku played for Anderlect
 
Spending 18m+ on Benteke on the back of 1 fairly good season at relegation-threatened Villa seems like a fairly big risk to me, and we've had enough of those at Spurs over recent years. I had really hoped for a striker that would give us more guile upfront, but if this deal goes through it's looking like we're going more the brute force route.
 
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