The Catch Up – Christian Benitez to Birmingham

Right, without looking at Wikipedia, hands up if you know anything about Christian Benitez!? No one? Well don’t worry yourself, you’re not alone.

To be honest not a lot is known on these shores about the stocky Ecuadorian striker who looks more like Mike Tyson than an international footballer. Say the name Benitez and most people think of the beardy Spanish fellow who likes to dabble in a spot of rotation. Yet if one was to delve further into the high altitude world of Ecuadorean football and find out a little bit about Birmingham’s new signing it would appear as though the Blues could, potentially, have got themselves a very good player on their hands…

Standing at 5 ft 6 and weighing in at 10st 10lbs “Chucho” (as he’s known to some people) has bagged 10 goals in 17 apps for Ecuador, had a better than 1 in 2 goal ratio for his Mexican team Santos Laguna and was awarded as the most valuable player in Primera División de México in 2008. The son of one of Ecuador’s leading strikers Ermen Benitez, Christian was linked with “some of Europe’s leading clubs” (read Wigan and PSV) before signing with the Blues for a club record £7.7m fee.

Benitez’s prime attributes are his pace and strength but, as with all South American players, he has the seemingly mandatory abundance of technical skill and flair. He is adept with both feet and despite his diminutive height, he has a great leap, scoring a number of goals with his head. If that’s not enough he even talks in the third person “I think this is the right time for Christian Benitez to play in the Premier League and I want to show the fans why Birmingham wanted to sign me.” Wow! He must be good.

So are the fantasy games as confident in his ability? Turning to the Fantasy Premier League game, Benitez has come into the game at 5.5 million and so falls into the “bargain bin striker” category, along with the likes of Kevin Doyle and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake of Wolves. In the Telegraph game he’s priced at just 3.8 million, that’s in the same bracket as Villa’s unproven Nathan Delfouneso and Liverpool’s benchwarmer Andriy Voronin. So is there a killing to be made here? Certainly if anyone is hoping to find the new Amr Zaki (first 10 games Zaki) then this guy could well be worth a cheeky gander (look).

There is a couple of slight caveats on Benitez though. The first being the evident lack of creativity for Birmingham. I will be writing more about this in future articles but Birmingham’s strength last season was their defence and not their goal scoring prowess and ability to create chances. The second, and possibly most important, is the young fellow’s injury record. He recently had to have an operation on a dodgy shoulder and though he should be ready to return in August, “Chucho” has had a history of injury problems most notably a knee problem which led to a redraft of his transfer from Santa Laguna. If he can keep fit and shake off his injured shoulder in time for the new season, it looks like he could come straight into the action ahead of Kevin Phillips, Marcus Bent and Cameron Jerome. Indeed, I would hazard that he’ll lead the line alongside McFadden, who likes to play in the “hole”.

For those who still need convincing I leave you with a quote from Benitez’s British-based agent Barry McIntosh:

“Benitez is as good as Messi and Tevez. It’s just the fact that he’s from Ecuador and his nationality overshadows just how good he actually he is. He’s far more experienced than Mauro Zarate was when he came to England and he’s got good feet, is skilful and is good in the air. I think we would be talking about £30million to £40million if he was Argentinean or Brazilian…He is better than Antonio Valencia and the equivalent of Messi.”

Well that’s surely enough to convince even the most hardened of cynics. He’s walked into my team.