Fulham Fallout

[Jimmy Smash]

And we're back to the question of whether we should have sold him in the transfer window.

[nigel]

We look a better outfit without Bent and with Cuellar.
I jut hope AM recognises this and builds from here. The problem with Bent is that he contributes very little, unless he scores he contributes nothing. The defence is allways going to be up against it if every ball played to Bent goes to the opposition. If you play Bent then you have to gear a game plan around him and have the players that can cope with playing with a passenger.

Spot on, mostly, for me Bent represents a style of football that has long gone, fine if your playing for a team like Sunderland, or Sunderland as was, but now most front men need to be able to move at pace, need to be able to work the channels, need to be part of the team as a vital cog, problem for old Benty is if he can't get into the 6yd box and wait for the crosses to fly in at him one after another, forget, he goes missing like he wasn't on the pitch, Villa IMO are just not that type of team.

We agreed on the Bent subject sometime ago Hawkeye. I think we got a bit of a kicking for it too, if I remember.
I feel that once we'd lost Young and Downing Bent was going to struggle. They used to give him 6 or 7 half decent chances a game, he's lucky to get 2 these days.
I don't deny that he's a quality finisher (Arsenal cup game), but, the way we play at the moment he'll always struggle.
I wouldn't be against cashing in on him for the £24m we paid as long as Randy allowed AMcL to use that money for 2 quality signings to go with our Bosmans and lesser outlays.

[hawkeye]

Nigel If MON had signed Bent not Heskey we probably would not be having this debate, that team then could probably have carried Bent and got the best out of him, some of those draws would have been wins and CL football.
It was the same when we signed Cascarino not Lineker and so nothin has reallly changed as far as our ambition.

[Ger Regan]

Nigel If MON had signed Bent not Heskey we probably would not be having this debate, that team then could probably have carried Bent and got the best out of him, some of those draws would have been wins and CL football.
It was the same when we signed Cascarino not Lineker and so nothin has reallly changed as far as our ambition.

The sad thing is that I don't think it was a lack of ambition in not signing bent, rather ineptitude in the transfer market. Same as with harewood, the money was there at the time, he just used it awfully on that occasion.