Belgian striker Christian Benteke has handed in a transfer request to his club Aston Villa. This comes after a successful season for the 22 year old after signing from Genk for £7m last summer.

He scored 19 goals in 34 appearances helping to keep Aston Villa’s top-flight status, eventually being beaten to the PFA Young Player of the Year by Gareth Bale.

Villa’s response

The club statement reads:

"In response to reports that Christian Benteke has not travelled to Germany with the club and has made a transfer request, we can confirm that both are accurate… Having received his transfer request, we have also informed him that should we receive an offer within an appropriate timeframe during pre-season which meets our valuation we would act upon it. But he will remain a Villa player should this not happen."

This shows us that Villa are prepared to accept that they might lose Benteke for the right price.

What next?

With Benteke set to leave, where would he go? He looks likely to stay in the Premier League having settled so well this season, and most assume that Champion’s League or Europa League football would be Christian’s main objective. This is backed up by Benteke’s agent Eris Kismet, who said this last month:

“If there is a team, a bigger team playing European football next season, that shows interest to Villa concerning Christian, I would be lying if I said Christian would ignore that.”

With Manchester United and Chelsea supposedly not interested, or looking elsewhere, that leaves only Manchester City, Spurs, Swansea, Wigan and us who will be playing European football next year. Discarding Wigan as they will be playing Championship football next year, as well as Swansea who look unlikely to be able to afford Christian’s sizeable £25m+ price tag, that leaves Spurs, City and us.

Unlikely

Despite the Higuaín talks seemingly stalling, as much as Arsenal fans would welcome a promising young striker, that would not dissolve the need for a proven finisher.

When he won’t even spend that bit extra for Higuaín, it seems very unlikely he’ll splash the cash on a striker who has had little to no European football experience. Coupled with potential competition from Spurs who need a striker and Man City possibly taking a gamble, it just seems extremely unlikely.

Unless Arsene really feels that Christian is the next big thing, there is almost no chance he will meet Villa’s valuation.

But, who knows, £11m was seen as steep for Henry in 1999, and just look what he did. Whatever happens, I hope we don’t live to regret the decision we make.

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