jedi_master wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 1:25 pm
The re-writing of history r.e Manuel Benson is laughable.
Benson was arguably our biggest match winner last season. He scored several point/match winning goals and was one who got better and better as the season developed. He was the player who looked more than good enough for this league in the Cup games against higher opposition. Using his minutes on the pitch as a stick to beat him with is non-sensical - that was our strategy for the majority of the season. Wear teams down then unleash Benny. How is that something to have a go at the player for?
He was being linked with clubs like Milan in the summer and we were all delighted to see him sign a new contract. Undoubtedly if we had sold him in the summer for less than £20m, a large proportion of those now saying ‘right decision’ would have been incandescent with rage at us selling him. As it is, we got him a bumper new deal, signed a boatload of ineffective (exceptions being Koleosho and Odobert who both play off the left rather than right) wingers and didn’t give Benson a chance when fit. As a result his transfer value will be negiligble in comparison now you’d imagine.
Excepting Koleosho and Odobert who play off the left, our other wide options to Benson are hardly pulling trees up are they? Tresor (Looking a preposterous signing at €18m, left winger), Bruun-Larsen (Loan, buy? Doesn’t look good enough regardless), JBG (Old, injury prone), Zaroury (Out of form, left winger), Redmond (Long term injury, seemingly unwanted by Kompany).
This is also not even reflecting on the fact that we’re almost certainly relegated and selling one of our very best players for that division! I’m all for defending Kompany and the clubs overall strategy on buy young/sell high but we have utterly messed that up with Benson. If he wasn’t going to be in the picture the time to sell was last summer. As it is we have nosedived his valuation (like quite a few players…) and then let him go.
I think we need to get a bit of perspective on Benson personally.
Firstly, he was a really important member of the squad last season and integral to our success. He scored a lot of important goals and impacted plenty of games, mainly from the bench - and he was most definitely a match winner. There's a perfectly reasonable argument that his impact last season at Championship level means he is worth retaining now on the assumption we'll be back at that level again next season.
However, his contribution last season does need placing in context. It is a fact that despite his eye catching goals, he didn't actually nail down a starting berth last season. Indeed as the season wore on he became increasingly a player who was used from the bench. Apart from the back to back games in the autumn at Sheffield United and at home to Rovers, he didn't start any of the games last season which might be considered "clutch" games - particularly tellingly he was a sub for both games over Easter against Boro and Sheff U. In part that was because for chunks of the season, he was in effect in competition with Tella for the right sided forward berth, but even when Tella was unavailable or used off the left, others (often JBG) were used ahead of Benson - particularly away from home.
I am pretty sure that is for the same reasons he is not starting or featuring much this season. Of all the players who haven't featured from last season, Benson is for me the most logical. Against defences sitting deep and challenging us to break a low block, he was brilliant. Whenever, though, the game was more contested - as it often was in the games against the more ambitious sides in the division, like Boro (after Christmas), WBA, Sheff U, Luton and so on, he very quickly drifted out of it as an attacking force - and defensively I don't think he was ever trusted by Kompany to support his full back, and he didn't press very well either. I don't agree that the preference for JBG this season is a reflection on the quality of our right back options. That might be a part of it but it also reflects the fact that you have to have hard working wingers as a lower end Premier League team who will not shirk the ugly stuff. As someone else has said, that is particularly the case if you already have one winger who you are allowing to get away with leaving space (in our case Odobert, and previously Koleosho).
Those are also all the reasons I did think we might cash in last summer - given his age (he's at a tipping point in value terms). If we get a good offer for him now that brings in a decent return on our outlay then personally, I think there's a logic to selling and reinvesting. If we go down, it will be with a view to bouncing straight back and then having a better go at surviving, and whilst Benson can help with the former I think there's a pretty fair conclusion to be drawn that he's never quite going to be good enough to do the latter - and since last season he's fallen down the pecking order because we've signed wingers Kompany rates higher. Those goals, though, will live long in the memory.
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