OF ALL THE GREATS, I’D SAY STREVS IS MY NO.1
CRAIG Mackail-Smith won international caps for Scotland. Andre Gray has scored 46 Premier League goals and cost Watford £18.5m. But despite playing alongside both men, Paul Benson ranks current Eastleigh boss Ben Strevens as his best-ever strike partner.
Strevens, 40, joined Dagenham & Redbridge from Crawley Town in 2006 and scored 34 goals in 111 games in tandem with Benson.
He joined Brentford in 2009 and also played for Wycombe Wanderers and Gillingham before retiring in 2018. “People like Andre and Craig are obviously fantastic players,” says Benson, who played with Mackail-Smith at Dagenham and Gray at Luton Town.
“But Strevs was the perfect foil for me. All of the things I didn’t like or couldn’t do, he was very good at. “He was almost a second striker. Very clever, very unselfish. I knew if I made a run or any movement, he’d find me. And he wouldn’t hesitate for a second.
“Ben was the biggest reason I scored so many goals when we went up in 2007. He joined after we sold Macca to Peterborough around Christmas and the number of goals I scored in that second half of the season was incredible.
“Then I got something like 22 or 23 goals in League Two. Again, he was a massive part of why I established myself in the Football League.”
As for pure ability, however, Benson rates Bradley Wright-Phillips above other EFL team-mates like Yann Kermorgant – who played in the Premier League with Bournemouth – and current Luton striker James Collins.
Now 35 and New York Red Bulls’ alltime leading scorer after five superlative years in the MLS, Wright-Phillips played with Benson at Charlton Athletic in 2010-11. “For finishing and movement, Bradley Wright-Phillips was fantastic,” he adds. “I learned so much from watching him in training.
“People talk about double movements to deceive defenders. Sometimes he’d make three or four to get in the right position. He was such a clever player and he’s probably the best finisher that I’ve ever played with. “Touch it, strike it, bang. Either foot, all different parts of the body. He could play the ball really well, too. I love a goalscorer and he was someone who just scored goals.”