Forward Christian Benteke described the current Crystal Palace team as “one of the best I’ve played with” in a recent interview.
The Belgian forward has an illustrious list of former teammates to compare it with, too, having competed with Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool, the Villa side that reached the 2015 FA Cup final and the 2008/09 Belgian First Division winners Standard Liège.
“With this team now I’ve been here for five years and it’s one of the best teams I’ve played with,” he told Premier League Productions.
“I’ve been through good times, bad times. Now we have new staff, new players, new energy in the team. I think it’s good.
“It’s healthy competition. The manager has been a top player so he knows what he needs for every game. I think you don’t have to take it personally but at the same time obviously when you don’t play you get frustrated. Sometimes a player might be more important for that game than another player, but that doesn’t mean it’s something personal.”
Addressing his own form – having scored four from 14 – he sought to explain his positive start so far:
“I knew first of all we were going to create more chances, and by creating more chances you get higher chances to score. I’m happy with the way I’m playing but in terms of goals I could have a couple more.
“[The manager] just gives me the confidence. We don’t really spend time talking about how I should play or what I should do because he knows I score goals, he knows I can help the team. It’s just for me and the other strikers to take our chances.
“I had a good start but just want to keep going because I know I can do it.”
Finally, the Belgian frontman was asked to look ahead to May, and explain what he feels would be a positive campaign for the south Londoners.
“It’s still important to be in the race between the first and 10th places because we don’t want to, and personally I don’t want, end up in the middle around March. You don’t want to play and are just playing games waiting for the season to end. We don’t want that. We want to push ourselves to go as high as possible.
“Finish higher than last season. For us that’s our aim… it would be a good season for Crystal Palace.”