Agreed, and he either can't be bothered or he just doesn't have a football brain that is alert enough to anticipate where to go. He needs to go.

I'm willing to back Benteke, as in my opinion he is one of, if not the most, dangerous strikers in the air in the league.

I regularly bang on about it on these threads that we never cross the ball and that is where he will score goals. I finally decided to look up the stats on this today for the first time and am not surprised we are 18th in the table for crosses: [Link]

If we have someone as dangerous as he is in the air, why do we not cross more?? That's not Benteke's fault, that is clearly tactical.

I agree that his movement could be better, but it is clearly tactical that we don't purposely don't cross, and if we did, I'm sure he would be working harder on his movement in training.

With the limitations in our squad, to me this seems an obvious way to create chances. If he doesn't win it its up to the midfielders to create something from the second ball.

There is a good argument that we could build to Benteke's strengths by crossing more, but it's a chicken and egg situation. He doesn't make runs as he doesn't expect crosses, the others don't cross it as he doesn't make runs when they do. On Sunday it was very much the latter, and he also against Burnley when Clyne put in a couple of very useful crosses.

In any event, scoring headers usually adds up to less than 20% of all goals scored, so I would argue that:

1. Benteke needs to do more to get goals outside of relying on crosses to this head.

2. Playing (for example) Zaha on the right wing and asking him to cross it may be a far less useful plan than playing him on the left and letting him cut inside.

That said, I do think that if we had more possession and territory, we could have the best of both. Zaha and Eze can cut inside, and the full backs can overlap and cross it. Mitchell seems quite useful in that respect.

Edited by TheBigToePunt (01 Mar 2021 11.47am)

[Link]

To summarize: He's s***, a complete waste of resources and the sooner he's gone the better.

my last comment on Tekkers.

First year goal v Middlesboro - far post header, rose early, aggressively out jumping defender

Same season v Hull from corner - gambled run to near post and powered home from a few yards out

Same season v Sunderland last minute. Hung back, waited for free kick and then run onto cross and powered home.

Same season v Everton - from almost edge of box got between the 2 centre backs and headed home.

He is not marking these runs as regularly now, although still has it somewhere in his locker, as the one header from corner/free kick in 2nd half showed yesterday. May have been the only header he won all game.