Benjani not ridiculed anymore

Okay, maybe Benjani is still ridiculed, but not by any true Pompey fan!

The one time club record signing at £4.4m from Auxerre - until Sulley Muntari came along for £7m, then David Nugent and John Utaka after, all beating the amount paid for the Zimbabwean - may not have scored the goals that he was bought to score, but he has more than repaid his fee, even if it was a little hefty.

He has come along way from the shy recluse he once was - often said to have hidden away on his own, spending the majority of his time alone in his room - and is rapidly becoming, if he is not already, one of our most important players.

After getting his first full season behind him, as well as overcoming some injury worries, he will be even stronger during the 2007/08 season and all being well we will even see him into double figures goals wise, although his work rate and determination will be worth almost as much to us as the goals he could score.

My thinking was - and this is something I have always completely believed to be true - that if we could bring in a goalscorer to play alongside him we will have the makings of a formidable partnership and a partnership that will also see Benjani scoring goals too, we now hopefully have the options to make this viable.

We will be missing several forwards that will be heading off to the African Nations in the early part of next year, but he will not be one of them, as I am told Zimbabwe are unable to qualify?

PLAY UP POMPEY!

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