The chances of Aston Villa holding on to Christian Benteke aren’t great, with plenty of interest coming from both Liverpool & Tottenham, although the Belgian striker prefers playing for Spurs.
Villa paid £7.8 million for Benteke last season, but aren’t planning to sell him for anything less than £25 million, considering his impressive ability (19 league goals) on a team with hardly any creative partners to aid him or draw away some attention.
Liverpool have already approached the player in an attempt to see if he’s interested, but at the moment, knowing Tottenham and Chelsea are also on the lookout, Benteke reportedly (according to Belgian media) rejected the approach from Anfield.
Why Spurs? Benteke wants to play in Europe, and for a bigger club than Villa, but the key word is to play. He knows that Chelsea doesn’t guarantee him a starting spot in the lineup, but something more along the line of a positional battle with Fernando Torres and Demba Ba.
At Tottenham, who have been looking for a striker AVB can trust for quite some time, he’s pretty confident he’ll have no problem playing as the starting striker and keeping that spot, making him more inclined to join the North London club, not to mention they’ll be in Europe next season, while Liverpool aren’t.
It’s hard to see Villa surviving in the Premier League without Benteke, or a similar signing in quality. The problem is finding someone like him, compared by many to a young Didier Drogba, isn’t something you manage to do each summer. True, ‘9’ strikers aren’t the most common breed of forwards anymore, and even one season for a bottom half club like Aston Villa is enough to make Benteke into one of the most expensive transfers we’ll probably see this summer.