Christian Benteke - The new David Platt

Like most people, I will be gutted if Christian Benteke leaves the club this summer. I think deep down we've all been expecting it, but we do cling to the hope that he may 'give us another season'!
Reputedly available via a contract release clause of £32.5m, it seems that we very well may lose our talisman over the next few weeks.

I was thinking back to when I was a teenager...our stellar player in the late 90's, David Platt, came back to Villa a hero after Italia 90. Inevitably he moved on eventually after 'giving us another season', and at the time the fee of £5.5m was huge. I was devastated though. What in god's name were we gonna do without him?

Joining the club around that time was a certain Mr. Ron Atkinson. A larger than life, opinionated, media savvy manager. I have commented many times of how Tim Sherwood reminds me of 'Big Ron'. Big Ron was allocated a sizeable chunk of that £5.5m to rebuild the Villa side that had finished a poor 17th the previous season under the drab management of Jozef Venglos. Using these funds he brought the following players in (amongst others)...Dalian Atkinson, Ugo Ehiogu, Shaun Teale, Kevin Richardson, Steve Staunton, Garry Parker, Earl Barrett, Mark Bosnich....these players went on to form the backbone of a great Villa side to watch. 2nd place in the inaugural premiership followed and the League Cup win in 1994 featured all of the above named players bar Garry Parker and the young Ugo!

If we were to recoup £32.5m for Benteke....and Sherwood was given it all to spend (plus any existing budget), I am pretty confident that for what would probably be a transfer budget of near to £50m (Lambert spent around £20m per season)....Sherwood could rebuild the side and take us into the top half of the table again.
Emulating Big Ron's heroics may be too much to ask, but £50m on 4/5 quality players would signal the end of our dark days scrapping around at the wrong end of the table....and will not jeopardise the financial stability of the club.

A very good post, like everyone I hope Benteke does not leave, but after reading your post I do feel a little better about it. I remember those times well, we should have won the league that season, but it all turned on Fergie time when they were losing at home to Sheff Weds (I think) brain going after all these years.

Everybody tweet Christian and tell him you love him LOL!!

Good post!!

Definitely life after CB (Should he go) and a good comparison between Big Ron and TS! Spent wisely we could be a better team 'overall' as opposed to a largely one man team. I'd dearly love him to stay, but having also witnessed the Platt era, I'm quietly hopeful we will still be ok.

Now what if RL decides to pocket all the cash? That's for a whole other debate...