Christian Benteke’s unfortunate fall from grace has been well documented over the past five years or so, but nevertheless, the streets will never forget how good he was in his prime.Aged just 21, Benteke signed for Aston Villa for around £7 million from Belgian side K.R.C Genk, and fulfilled a lifelong dream to play in the Premier League in the process.And boy did he make an impression. He went on to keep Villa in the Premier League, pretty much single-handedly, across three successful seasons at the club between 2012 and 2015.The Belgian striker terrorised the strongest of top-flight defences and scored 42 goals in 82 appearances – an average of almost one goal in every two games in claret and blue.Needless to say, he was one of the most talked about strikers in the league. You knew that whenever he got on the ball, something was going to happen – regardless of his opposition.In case you need a little reminder of just how Benteke secured himself club legend status at Villa Park, let us point you towards a brilliant video which shows the Belgian at his very best.Posted to Twitter, it starts way back from his earliest days at Villa and runs you through his greatest goals, from long-range strikes to bullet headers and everything in between.Take a look for yourself below:
What a player he was.
Few of today’s Premier League strikers (including himself!) have managed to match the presence and composure in the penalty area he showed when playing up front for Villa.
The footage exposes just how many important goals the Belgian scored during his time at Villa Park. Many of them came against the top six, or else, were vital goals in the last ten minutes.
As you’ll remember, his world-class form secured him a big-money move to Liverpool in 2015, where unfortunately, he never quite managed to recapture that quality.
And although he’s still working on it at Palace, we’ll always remember him best as one of Villa’s greatest strikers in recent memory.