Club that cannot stop scoring lets yesterday's man go forth.

[PaulWinch again]

Paul Lambert has hit back at claims by Darren Bent he froze the striker out over a “personal” feud.

Striker Bent, 30, who cost Villa £24million in 2011, has not started a Premier League game for the club for 21 months.

Bent has been loaned out to top-flight Fulham last term and both Brighton and now Derby this season despite Villa struggling for goals.

But Villa boss Lambert responded: “I think Darren has got to be honest with himself. If you ask anyone here, or any of his team-mates, they’d tell you it’s nothing personal.


“I never stood in his way to go to any other club. The only clubs that came in for him were Championship clubs - not one Premier League club. That says a lot, so it was never personal.

“He went to Brighton for a month and never wanted to renew it. Went to Derby and never started a game.

“At Fulham, he never played a lot of games towards the tail end. Was it personal with me when he was at Fulham? It is what it is, but it was never personal.”

*shudder*

You could argue it's a bit of an unprofessional way to speak about someone who's still in effect a Villa player.

Indeed it is. But I do basically agree that Bent is finished at the top level and wouldn't be much use to us.

[Monty]

Reading between the lines, it looks like Lambert wasn't the one who initiated the unprofessionalism here.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Reading between the lines, it looks like Lambert wasn't the one who initiated the unprofessionalism here.

The only crime Lambert has in the matter was making Bent captain then not bothering to tell him he was being replaced. It was rumoured Bent took it very badly and decided to ask for a transfer.. in October!

[Dante Lavelli]

Reading between the lines, it looks like Lambert wasn't the one who initiated the unprofessionalism here.

The only crime Lambert has in the matter was making Bent captain then not bothering to tell him he was being replaced. It was rumoured Bent took it very badly and decided to ask for a transfer.. in October!

Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that rumour.  It does sum up Villa's luck over the past few years that when we did show ambition the player gets injured and never properly recovers (for whatever reason - I suspect Dave might be right).  In a parallel world Bent continues to improve and moves to Man U for 45m (then gets injured).

[Tom_Mc9?]

But he made him captain?

It could be argued that it was one of many bad errors Lambert has made at Villa, or you could argue that he made a mistake, realised it and quickly rectified it.

Bent does seem an odd choice though, whichever way you look at it.

[Ads]

When Bent was carted off at Wigan, I said that was the last time we would ever see him play football for us again and I was right.

[AV82EC]

When Bent was carted off at Wigan, I said that was the last time we would ever see him play football for us again and I was right.

This.

[saunders_heroes]

When Bent was carted off at Wigan, I said that was the last time we would ever see him play football for us again and I was right.

It didn't take a genius to work that one out. He's on massive wages and Lerner wanted the biggest earners out of the club. In my opinion it's our wage policy that has plummeted us into decline over the last 5 seasons.

[rob_bridge]

When Bent was carted off at Wigan, I said that was the last time we would ever see him play football for us again and I was right.

It didn't take a genius to work that one out. He's on massive wages and Lerner wanted the biggest earners out of the club. In my opinion it's our wage policy that has plummeted us into decline over the last 5 seasons.

And the prior wage policy that helped us run up £100m worth of debt

[Villa in Denmark]

When Bent was carted off at Wigan, I said that was the last time we would ever see him play football for us again and I was right.

It didn't take a genius to work that one out. He's on massive wages and Lerner wanted the biggest earners out of the club. In my opinion it's our wage policy that has plummeted us into decline over the last 5 seasons.

I think the point was, a serious achilles injury at his age, when his game is based purely on movement and speed across the first 2 yards meant that he was finished as a player at this level.

At no point throughout all of his subsequent appearances has he looked remotely like the player who kept us up with his goals across two half seasons.  That's got nothing to do with wages and everything to do with being physically FUBAR.

[Clampy]

When Bent was carted off at Wigan, I said that was the last time we would ever see him play football for us again and I was right.

It didn't take a genius to work that one out. He's on massive wages and Lerner wanted the biggest earners out of the club. In my opinion it's our wage policy that has plummeted us into decline over the last 5 seasons.

And the prior wage policy that helped us run up £100m worth of debt

Exactly. We couldn't keep that level of spending up.

[saunders_heroes]

When Bent was carted off at Wigan, I said that was the last time we would ever see him play football for us again and I was right.

It didn't take a genius to work that one out. He's on massive wages and Lerner wanted the biggest earners out of the club. In my opinion it's our wage policy that has plummeted us into decline over the last 5 seasons.

And the prior wage policy that helped us run up £100m worth of debt

Exactly. We couldn't keep that level of spending up.

So we completely gave up.

[Clampy]

When Bent was carted off at Wigan, I said that was the last time we would ever see him play football for us again and I was right.

It didn't take a genius to work that one out. He's on massive wages and Lerner wanted the biggest earners out of the club. In my opinion it's our wage policy that has plummeted us into decline over the last 5 seasons.

And the prior wage policy that helped us run up £100m worth of debt

Exactly. We couldn't keep that level of spending up.

So we completely gave up.

No, we cut down the spending. If we'd have 'completely given up', we'd be in League One by now.

[aj2k77]

When Bent was carted off at Wigan, I said that was the last time we would ever see him play football for us again and I was right.

It didn't take a genius to work that one out. He's on massive wages and Lerner wanted the biggest earners out of the club. In my opinion it's our wage policy that has plummeted us into decline over the last 5 seasons.

And the prior wage policy that helped us run up £100m worth of debt

Exactly. We couldn't keep that level of spending up.

Two wages policies that I doubt would have been in force had we had some people in place to help guide Lerner in his first venture in Football. The General and MON were not professionals in the running of sports clubs and Randy having come from a sports club should have known better than to come in blind.

What he is doing now, with Fox and looking in to putting an infrastructure at various levels inside the club is what he should have been doing from the word go. Man City, ok they are on a different level, but the Arabs didn't come in and just throw cash at them and see what happened. They poached different experienced guys from big clubs to sort them out. We had MON a true 90's man and General K who was nothing but soundbites.

I applaud the club for doing what they are doing now, but it shouldn't have taken this long and we wouldn't have been so shit had he bought the club and taken a serious look at running it rather than Lazily tossing cash at Martin O'spunkmillions and doing a few things to make the fans feel good.

[Malandro]

The only thing that I'm unsure about is whether he was of more value on our bench than farmed out.

What goes against him is, from what I could see, he was massively over weight in pre season.
I suppose its all irrelevant, he's done here.