Rudy Gestede have joined premier league club Middlesbrough from Aston Villa after signing a deal that will keep him until June 2020.
The two clubs agreed a fee between £6m and £7m, BBC Tees Sport understands.
Benin international Gestede joined Villa from Blackburn in July 2015 and has scored 10 goals in 55 appearances.
READ | Get to know new #Boro man @RudyGestede with this fact file on the striker #UTB
? https://t.co/sbqnm1Dp16 pic.twitter.com/iyCbl2SEZQ— Middlesbrough FC (@Boro) January 4, 2017
But the 28-year-old has started only three games since Steve Bruce took over at the Championship club in October and was left out of Villa’s squad for Monday’s 1-0 defeat at Cardiff City.
Gestede scored five goals as Villa were relegated from the top flight last season, having also had a brief spell in the Premier League with Cardiff in 2013-14.
Middlesbrough are currently 16th in the Premier League, four points above the relegation zone, and are the joint-lowest scorers this season – along with bottom side Hull – with 17 goals in 20 games.
He has been capped ten times by Benin, scoring twice for Les Écureuils (The Squirrels). He will not be at this year’s Africa Cup of Nations because Benin failed to qualify.
Following a youth career with French side Metz, Gestede made the move to English football with Welsh side Cardiff City in 2011.
He started the 2012 League Cup Final for The Bluebirds. Stewart Downing was Man of the Match for opponents Liverpool, who would win the trophy on penalties.
After helping Cardiff to win promotion from the Championship in 2012/13, he would make his Premier League debut the opening weekend following season – a 2-0 defeat against West Ham.
Gestede then returned to the Championship with Blackburn Rovers, initially on an emergency loan before signing permanently in January 2014. The transfer was confirmed shortly after his first league goal for the club, against Leeds United.
The Beninois would win the Championship Player of the Month award for April later that campaign, after scoring six times in seven games.
At Rovers, he would form a formidable partnership with Jordan Rhodes. In the 2014/15 season, the duo hit 43 goals between them in all competitions (22 for Gestede).
That left Gestede as the Championship’s joint-fourth top scorer for the season, behind Rhodes, Troy Deeney and Daryl Murphy, tied with Odion Ighalo and Callum Wilson and ahead of Boro’s Patrick Bamford.
