Breaking News: Bent Signs

[The Situation]

I think they are very similar to us, a big club with a seemingly good owner who backs the manager without interference, we are both always going to struggle to attract the very best players and keep hold of the ones we do have. They are just going to have to take it on the chin because it wont be the last time either club loses a player they want to keep.

Plus unfortunately for them, Sunderland is an absolute shit hole that nobody in their right mind would want to live in unless they were born there.

Pretty much this.

I don't think I've ever seen so many chavs in my life when I went to Sunderland away last season. It would seem like a really grim place to live if you were earning 40k a week.

Birmingham's not exactly the most desierable city in the world but it has a good city centre, lots of designer stores, has a Selfridges and lots of good restaurants and clubs. The areas outside of Birmingham seem pretty nice to live in near Bodymoor Heath training ground - so when Darren's finished with training he can go down The Belfry and play a peaceful 9 holes at a Championship Course.

[KevinGage]

Nah, he'll be straight into Mr Egg or whatever the latest incarnation is.

Food poisoning whilst you wait.

[Mazrim]

Or perhaps visit Thomas Land at Drayton Manor Park and Zoo.

[PeterWithe]

Hmmm, I struggling to see Darren living in a two-up, two down next door to Roker Park.

[The Situation]

[PeterWithe]

Is that Danny Murphy? I hope we got permission for that.

[pauliewalnuts]

I lived in the north east for a while.

Sunderland is a shit hole. Well, it was the last time I went, in 1989, and I bet it hasn't changed since.

Newcastle is decent, though, although it's not the shopping mecca Brum is. The issue with the north east clubs it that it is, frankly, quite a long way from the rest of the country (yes, I know that doesn't make sense, but you know what I mean).

It is also very much a goldfish bowl - ie people point at expensive cars and are amazed by things like helicopters (probably the reason Michael Owen didn't do well there)

[pauliewalnuts]

I think they are very similar to us, a big club with a seemingly good owner who backs the manager without interference, we are both always going to struggle to attract the very best players and keep hold of the ones we do have. They are just going to have to take it on the chin because it wont be the last time either club loses a player they want to keep.

Plus unfortunately for them, Sunderland is an absolute shit hole that nobody in their right mind would want to live in unless they were born there.

Pretty much this.

I don't think I've ever seen so many chavs in my life when I went to Sunderland away last season. It would seem like a really grim place to live if you were earning 40k a week.

Birmingham's not exactly the most desierable city in the world but it has a good city centre, lots of designer stores, has a Selfridges and lots of good restaurants and clubs. The areas outside of Birmingham seem pretty nice to live in near Bodymoor Heath training ground - so when Darren's finished with training he can go down The Belfry and play a peaceful 9 holes at a Championship Course.

There are lots of lovely places to live around the city, the shopping in the city only lags behind one place - London - and the city centre itself is vibrant and full of places for hideously overpaid mid 20s blokes to spunk their money away.

It even managed to keep John Carew entertained for four years before he got bored, which takes some doing.

[Brend'Watkins]

I was up in the North East at 12ish today.  The sky was blue, the sun was shining and it wasn't really cold.  It's still a shit hole.

Some parts are very nice mind but not the ones I was in today.

[Merv]

I wonder why he switched papers. It can't have been about the quality of the product.

There were around 400,000 reasons per year that he switched papers.

I know. I'm sure you picked up on the not-so subtle point I was trying to make. Hypocrisy is rife among not just managers here, but journalists. It's alright for Steve Bruce to improve his career, and journalists to improve theirs... but Darren Bent? How dare he!

[fbriai]

Martin Samuel isn't paid that sort of money just to report dull, staid facts. He's there to give his views and to do it in an entertaining way and, to my mind, he does a pretty good job even if I don't always agree with it.

I agree with Chris. He's one of the few that are worth reading - even if he is writing for 'them' - especially when he sticks it to the FA. I don't always agree with him either, but he's normally pretty good. His article a few months back on junior football and pitch sizes and the way the FA are more interested in talking platitudes and producing coffee table publications than actually doing anything, was superb.

[lardboy]

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-sport/football/article-23915521-as-aston-villa-sink-their-pond-is-just-the-right-size-for-darren-bent.do

Probably best not to read this if you want to avoid an embolism.

As Aston Villa sink, their pond is just the right size for Darren Bent

Sunderland may be reeling from Darren Bent's somewhat baffling decision to jump ship for Aston Villa but they can console themselves with the knowledge that the club have outgrown him.

Bent's desire to exchange the high seas of the Stadium of Light for the troubled waters of Villa Park suggests that he simply relishes life as the big fish in a small pond.

Such has been Sunderland's improvement that perhaps their rivers now run too deep. Bent moved to the north-east in August 2009 for a club record £10.5million and has scored a remarkable 32 goals in 58 Premier League appearances to date as the Black Cats progress under Steve Bruce.

Bent was integral to that development and in the first part of the present campaign, he continued to carry the side's only consistent goalscoring threat.

He stood out as the talisman of a side so reliant on his prowess to keep them afloat. No longer.

Asamoah Gyan has made a hugely promising start to his Sunderland career - after usurping Bent as the club's most expensive asset - and the former Rennes striker appears well-equipped to thrive in English football.

Sunderland's 3-0 victory at Chelsea earlier in the season was sensational in itself - the thought of achieving such a result without Bent would have been incomprehensible before Gyan arrived.

Of course, Bruce envisaged Bent and Gyan tearing into opponents in tandem but their partnership failed to ignite, their movement did not complement each other and they played like strangers. Bruce would have hoped that understanding would have been developed over time but Bent removed that possibility when signing for Villa last night in a £24million deal after handing in a written transfer request following Sunday's 1-1 draw against Newcastle United.

Bent thrives best when a team are built around him but Sunderland have grown to the extent they no longer need to rely on one weapon to attack - Gyan and the hugely promising Danny Welbeck, on loan from Manchester United, have added fresh dimensions to their play. Consequently, Bent has had to adapt as the team developed but he appeared unwilling or incapable of that adjustment.

His career suggests the latter. Of his two seasons at Tottenham, the first was a huge disappointment and even though he finished the second as the club's top scorer with 17 goals in all competitions, Harry Redknapp remained unconvinced of his ability to settle into life as part of a pool of four rotated strikers that exist at nearly all the top sides.

It is a harsh judgement of a player who has scored goals throughout his career but it is hugely questionable whether he can cut it at the highest level; perhaps the world's leading clubs agree given his sudden availability has not provoked a transfer scramble to rival Villa's huge offer.

(Incidentally, a penny for Martin O'Neill's thoughts after leaving Villa over the summer due to a refusal to invest in the playing squad as owner Randy Lerner preached frugality over free spending).

Similarly, his case to play for England remains unconvincing as although he could do little more in terms of scoring goals, it is debatable whether he has the versatility required to succeed at international level.

Bent needs a side to be built around him - it was in such circumstances that he made his name at Charlton and Gerard Houllier should do the same at Villa in a 4-5-1 system with his new man in the limelight at the apex.

In all likelihood, Bent will therefore thrive but that does not qualify the wisdom of the move from the player's perspective.

A full explanation will no doubt emerge over the coming weeks - Bent reportedly asked to leave in the summer only to be talked round by Bruce and the club's hierarchy - but it is hard to believe his England credentials will be enhanced by trading a fight for Europe for a relegation dogfight.

Villa are undeniably a bigger club in terms of their history but their present malaise cannot surely hold greater appeal to a player at a club enjoying such heights as Sunderland are at present.

Cynics would argue the move is about money - Bent is thought to have doubled his wages to £80,000 a week (again, O'Neill must be lost for words) - while the striker has also moved to slightly warmer climes in the Midlands but it appears an odd time to have forced through a move based solely on salary and lifestyle.

Despite protestations from Bruce that the striker let everyone down at the Stadium of Light by moving to Villa, the opportunity to double your money by selling is good business in anyone's book. At least in the two seasons he was at the club he scored more than 30 Premier League goals.

Perhaps Bent lacks ambition. He turns 27 next month and enters the prime of his career with the probability that he has one more big move ahead of him after joining Villa.

All indications suggest that won't be to a leading club and that seems something of a shame.

But then, it is always harder to swim upstream.

[Brend'Watkins]

Journalists seem to be on a mission to out negative each other regarding Bent and the club. 

Maybe it's the backlash for a collective bollocking from their editors for not having wind of this deal months ago.  It could have filled numerous back pages for days and weeks if they had.

[Risso]

Journalists seem to be on a mission to out negative each other regarding Bent and the club. 

Maybe it's the backlash for a collective bollocking from their editors for not having wind of this deal months ago.  It could have filled numerous back pages for days and weeks if they had.

Not a single one has mentioned the absolute fortune handed out in wages to shit players  in the past.

[Phil from the upper holte]

Nah, he'll be straight into Mr Egg or whatever the latest incarnation is.

Food poisoning whilst you wait.

Mr Egg has been shut down