only me » Tue Jul 07, 2015 1:47 pm wrote:ycsatbjywtbiastkamb » Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:09 am wrote:I can understand the doubts people have about wether Benteke would be a natural fit for us but I think he's a lot more mobile than we give him credit for, he's no Carroll or Lambert, for a big lad he can really shift.
But more importantly I think any side playing in England needs to have the ability to score goals from crosses and percentage balls into the box, Chelsea have always been big believers in having a target man, City have had Dzeko (and now Bony), United got top 4 off the back of Fellaini and even Arsenal have got Giroud.
Those teams are not ale house sides but they all realise that it's just not realistic to be able to play exhibition football week in week out for 9 months of the year. This league is physical and its a slog, the bottom teams don't just roll over and when the occasion demands you have to be able to roll your sleeves up, meet fire with fire and eek out results by scoring scruffy goals, if you don't have that ability then you end up looking like us at the end of last season.
If we rely solely on scoring perfect picture book goals then we'll be lucky to score 1 a week, we need someone who will spent most of the match in the opposition box and who will fight tooth and nail to get on the end of things.
If Coutinho and Firmino click and we start playing like Barcelona then great, Sturridge will dovetail perfectly with them, but let's be realistic, this is England not Spain, strength, power and pace go a long way here, you only have to look at Chelsea and City over the last few years to see that.
Good post Yaka i understand what you are saying i'm just not very excited by Benteke i really hoped we would aim a bit higher.
As I said my original post mate this league is a hard slog over 9 months and we need to start developing the ability to dig out results when we aren't firing on all cylinders. I'm not saying let's start playing like Wimbledon but it would be very handy to have a CF in our squad who doesn't get brushed aside by defenders in the box.
At the moment we are too easy to play against and too easy to defend against, all our forwards want to be either involved in the build up or put through one on one with the keeper, no one (bar Lambert, but he's too slow) wants to do the hard yards in terms of getting in the box and battling it out with CB's to get on the end of things.
Unfortunately stats show that's where most goals come from, the likes of Ian Rush and Gary Lineker scored the majority of their goals from 6/7 yards out, who have we currently got in our squad who sets up camp on the opposition penalty spot?
There's a reason why Benteke has a 1 in 2 goal scoring record despite playing for probably the least creative team in the division over the last 2/3 years and that's because he gets himself into goal scoring positions.
When he first arrived at Villa he looked phenominal, he scored 25 goals feeding off scraps, if he hits form here he could rip this division up.
