Yeah, we should be praising him for being in the epl at all with a chance of staying up, could be doing a sunderland without him last season!

Very true, and thanks to christian benteke that was a premier league goal, not a championship one!

Until this season, Christian, over five previous seasons in the Premier was averaging something like a goal every 2.5 games, including last season with Palace. It's difficult to know quite what has gone wrong this season. I suspect it's primarily a catastrophic loss of confidence. In that respect, the penalty miss against Bournemouth must surely have been massively significant. His all round play and contribution, other than goals scored, is OK. In goal scoring terms, he is a shadow of the player he was last season.

He will be be as aware as everyone else that his lack of goals has been one of the main reasons why we are not at least 6-8 points better off. Quite what Roy Hodgson does about this I'm not sure as for the Bournemouth game at least, Benteke remains his only feasible striking option. I suppose he he has little option but to do what he can to support Christian in training, perhaps try a sports psychologist (if that hasn't already been tried) and ensure that his team mates give him all the encouragement possible.

There can surely be no doubt that if someone could wave a magic wand and suddenly return Christian to his old goal scoring form that our critical last six games would be a whole lot easier to negotiate. And as Palace fans, the best thing we can do is to give him as much support as possible.

One last comment - I surely can't be the only Palace fan to note the irony of Christian not scoring against his old club last Saturday, when in the same cicumstances an ex-Palace striker would surely be guaranteed to score!

Great post, and i feel knowing how important the last 6 games are, we all are going to give him as much support we can, be silly not to in case we want to watch championship football next season,

Im not saying he"s had a great goal scoring season boz, but does his bit on the rest of the pitch and people constantly slagging him off isn"t going to help his confidence one bit, also don"t think the way we cross the ball is helping his style of play, was there saturday and seems every ball into the box seems like a half hearted chip with no power, where benteke is more suited to getting his head on a ball blasted in with power! Got a feeling he"s going to score a few in next games, once one goes in, the confidence will return !

All in it together monster, they all contribute and live, or die, together!Its a team game, and team spirit seems ok to me.