where does this idea come from that avb would want a more "technical" striker? is it because he's a stylish portugeeza? let's review. his previous side, porto, were a team built around power, the only player they had who you'd describe as being technical was joao moutinho. before this he worked as an apprentice under jose mourinho's chelsea, another side who was built around pace and power. their main man up top - drogba, whilst being technically skilled was a player who thrived on bullying and overpowering the opposition. benteke seems to have earnt this tag amongst some as being a bit of an oaf who simply gets by with his power, to me that is incredibly unfair, the guy can also play as well. my opinion is that avb thinks that given the respective budgets of spurs and the other four teams that it'll be difficult to "outplay" them so why not try to overpower them instead? we have just spent £17m on a power before style midfielder afterall.
not to mention that avb has in fact spoke fondly of benteke before - http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/dec/25/tottenham-andre-villas-boas-christian-benteke
My impression from watching between 5 and 10 Villa games last season is it's not great, but at least it's somewhat better than that of a Hippo. Looking at the stats he sees much more of the ball and looses the ball less often (as compared to amount of touches/min) than Defoe and Adebayor.
I guess we can go by touches of the ball and how often he was dispossessed, though this obviously doesn't tell the whole story.
Defoe: 749 touches - 47 unsuccessful touches - was dispossessed 42 times
Adebayor: 891 touches - 60 unsuccessful touches - was dispossessed 60 times
Benteke: 1575 touches - 76 unsuccessful touches - was dispossessed 83 times
Out of the three Benteke is the runaway winner in the "total losses of possession" category, but this is due to his low passing accuracy more than poor ball control.
where does this idea come from that avb would want a more "technical" striker? is it because he's a stylish portugeeza? let's review. his previous side, porto, were a team built around power, the only player they had who you'd describe as being technical was joao moutinho. before this he worked as an apprentice under jose mourinho's chelsea, another side who was built around pace and power. their main man up top - drogba, whilst being technically skilled was a player who thrived on bullying and overpowering the opposition. benteke seems to have earnt this tag amongst some as being a bit of an oaf who simply gets by with his power, to me that is incredibly unfair, the guy can also play as well. my opinion is that avb thinks that given the respective budgets of spurs and the other four teams that it'll be difficult to "outplay" them so why not try to overpower them instead? we have just spent £17m on a power before style midfielder afterall.
not to mention that avb has in fact spoke fondly of benteke before - http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/dec/25/tottenham-andre-villas-boas-christian-benteke
With those numbers, it says to me that in 749 touches, Defoe lost it or failed to control it (47 + 42) = 89 times.
So, if we do the maths and wanted to figure out the ratio for successful touches vs unsuccessful touches we would do this:
Defoe: 749 ÷ (47 + 42) = 8.42
What that tells us is that Defoe's ratio for successful vs unsuccessful (retains ball vs is dispossessed/loses control) touches on the ball is:
8.42:1
If we do the maths for the Adebayor and Benteke we get these results:
Adebayor: 891 ÷ (60 + 60) = 7.43 Ratio = 7.43:1
Beteke: 1,575 ÷ (76 + 83) = 9.91 Ratio = 9.91:1
So, even though Benteke has lost the ball/been disposed more times in total then Adebayor and Defoe, when you look at it on averages, he is actually losing the ball less then the other two.
Defoe: Retains ball 8.42 times for every 1 time he loses it.
Adebayor: Retains ball 7.43 times for every 1 time he loses it.
Benteke: Retains ball 9.91 times for every 1 time he loses it.
Also has a much better conversion rate and will probably have more time on the ball with us, simply because we have more possession than villa.
Yet David Villa was his first choice until he rejected us. Falcao is not a big guy. He's 5'10.
And at Chelsea he used Fernando Torres, certainly not a powerful player, even when he had Drogba.
more time with his back to goal and 2 defenders on him lol
Then that means more space for bale, paulinho etc...
You can't really compare Messi to Bernard. We wouldn't even be discussing buying him if he was in the same league.
FYI Messi is 5 ft 7. Bernard is 5 ft 4.
then we'll beable to really see if he's a 20+ mil striker or not
I'd rather bring Berby back for afew seasons on the cheap
how do you know david villa was his or even our first choice? a few tenuous paper links? even then he could've been coming in as a wide forward rather than a central role. falcao's not big but he plays like an old-fashioned centre forward, he doesn't do a whole lot off the ball and i'd struggle to call him a "technical" striker. as for torres and drogba, we all know that torres was abramovich's guy and his instructions to avb was to phase out the old guard. i still wouldn't describe torres as a technical striker either, when he was on top at liverpool, it was his his pace, power and finishing that put him there.
Several ITKs claimed Villa was a top target. And I doubt he was going to play wide, given that it's one of the reasons he was leaving.
And I'd like to to name me 3 #9 more technical that Torres in the EPL