Aston Villa let their new Benteke leave for £0, now he's outscoring Rogers

Despite defeat on Tuesday night, there’s still so much for Aston Villa to play for in the remaining months of the season.

In mid-week, Unai Emery‘s team were hammered 4-1 by Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park, meaning the Claret and Blue Army have won only one of their last seven in the Premier League, thereby slipping down to tenth.

Nevertheless, the Villans have reached the FA Cup fifth round for the first time since being runners-up a decade ago, welcoming Cardiff City to Villa Park on Friday night, before travelling to Jan Breydelstadion for the first leg of their Champions League last 16 tie against Club Brugge.

However, not so long ago, being in the Champions League and aiming to win domestic cups was a mere pipe dream for Villa supporters, personified by their former club-record signing, compared to one of the club’s best-ever Premier League strikers, who has completely fallen off the radar.

Christian Benteke’s time at Aston Villa

Christian Benteke was only at Aston Villa for three seasons but made quite the impression in the Midlands, scoring some pivotal goals and making the club a huge return on their investment.

The Belgian, only 22-years-old at the time, arrived from Genk for a reported £7m on deadline day in the summer of 2012.

He would go on to score 49 goals in just 101 appearances in a claret and blue shirt, averaging a goal every 171 minutes, firing Villa to the FA Cup Final in 2015, as well as being a key figure as Tim Sherwood’s team avoided relegation that same season.

Hailed as “world-class” by another of his former managers Paul Lambert, Benteke remains one of only seven players to have scored 40+ goals for Villa in the Premier League.

As the table shows, Benteke has, by far, the best minutes-per-goal ratio of any Villa forward in the Premier League-era, well apart from Jhon Durán, whose 12 goals came in just 1,214 minutes, which equates to a goal every 101 minutes.

Nevertheless, his prolific figures saw Benteke join Liverpool for £32.5m in 2015, later admitting his three years at Villa were “the best time” of his career, but the supposed heir to the Belgian’s throne didn’t quite live up to these high standards.

Where Are They Now

Your star player or biggest flop has left the club but what are they doing in the present day? This article is part of Football FanCast’s Where Are They Now series.

What happened to Aston Villa’s next Christian Benteke

Following their promotion back to the Premier League in 2019, Aston Villa went big, spending a reported £140m on 12 new recruits.

The most expensive of those was Wesley, who arrived from Club Brugge for £22m, at the time a club-record.

The previous season, the Brazilian had scored 17 goals for the Belgian Blue-Blacks, on target home and away against Monaco in the Champions League, with Luke Hatfield of the Daily Express comparing him to Benteke, who’d also arrived from Belgium, stating ‘both bring a sizeable frame and exciting physical traits’.

Welsey did make a decent start to his Villa career, scoring six times during the first half of the season, earning him his senior international debut for Brazil against Argentina, only to rupture his anterior cruciate ligament during a 2-1 victory at Burnley on New Year’s Day.

From that moment on, his Villa career never recovered, spending 480 days on the sidelines, but barely featuring in claret and blue again, loaned back to Club Brugge for the following season.

So, let’s look at Wesley’s post-ACL injury career.

As the table shows, Wesley’s career has never really recovered, Adam Cleary of Football League World describing his one-season stint at Stoke as ‘miserable’ and a ‘disaster’. That is until now.

Last summer, the hulking striker joined Fatih Karagümrük, who were relegated from the Turkish Süper Lig last season, for whom he has been on fire, scoring 14 goals, two more than current Villa star Morgan Rogers, making him the division’s leading scorer, with his team second, on course for automatic promotion.

Of course, the Turkish second-tier isn’t the highest level of football around, Football Data Base believes Fatih Karagümrük to be the 1,418th strongest team in the world, just below Reading and Portsmouth for context, but it’s great to see Wesley enjoying his best scoring season since that horrific injury at Turf Moor.

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