Crystal Palace's Christian Benteke will have West Ham worried, says Danny Murphy

Danny Murphy14 October 2016

I have always been a fan of Christian Benteke and his presence alone has helped Crystal Palace.

When centre-backs see him in the opposition as they are walking out, they know they will be in a battle. They and their team-mates know that with Benteke on the pitch, Palace have firepower. Those thoughts will be going through the minds of the West Ham players shortly before kick-off.

I know Benteke didn’t do so well at Liverpool but that happens. He had one or two bad games but the system did not suit him. He showed what he could do in the Premier League when he helped keep Aston Villa up in 2015.

Brendan Rodgers signed him for Liverpool, and then Jurgen Klopp came in and didn’t fancy him. But I never heard him moaning, or complaining, and that impressed me.

It’s not always easy to start well at a new club but he has taken it in his stride, with three goals in his opening five League games. Against a West Ham side who have already conceded 17 times in the League, Benteke and Palace will be full of confidence. Before they signed Benteke, Palace had good pace out wide and could stretch teams, but they lacked that physical power that he brings.

West Ham will be feeling as though every mistake they make is punished, and some of them will be worried about the afternoon. That’s what happens when you’re conceding goals. Maybe they signed too many players in the summer — 10 is a significant number — and there have been problems with injuries. But I would expect them to set up at Palace in a way that makes them much harder to beat.

Slaven Bilic is a good manager who will have been analysing everything very closely, and I am confident he can come up with the right answers.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in