After being handed a war chest reportedly upwards of £50million, Steve Bruce has cashed in his largest cheque yet – luring Darren Bent to the North-East for a club record fee of £10million. The move wasn’t all plain sailing though…
Bent had to abandon Spurs’ flight to China for the Barclays Asia Trophy at the very last minute, and was even more recently caught up in a furore over his reported tweetings bemoaning the transfer process – the most salient tweet being aimed at the Tottenham chairman:
“Do I wanna go Hull City NO. Do I wanna go stoke NO do I wanna go sunderland YES so stop f****** around levy [sic].”
As I previously reported, ever since Peter Crouch signed for Tottenham, the writing was seemingly on the wall for Bents White Hart Lane career, and these tweets made his departure all the more inevitable. Not resting on his laurels following his inability to persuade the aforementioned Crouch to join, Bruce has snapped up a striker he has been linked with all summer…
Despite never being considered a pivotal player at Spurs, and almost losing his place in the team to Harry Redknapp’s wife, Bent still kept knocking the goals in at a healthy rate for the club. The England striker finished last season as the clubs top scorer with a highly commendable 12 league goals in a mere 21 starts. These are returns that are hard to dismiss, and to prove not a flash in the pan either, Bent has equally tantalising statistics of 100 career league goals in 212 starts.
As the son of a Charlton Athletic fan, Bents two years at the club (and the rest of his career to date) have left nothing short of a long and lasting memory. To me, the man is one of the best goal-scorers in the English game, and in joining Sunderland will provide them with a very welcome abundance of goals. The move could also do wonders for his chances to make the flight to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa as well – one thing is for sure, this is one plane ride he won’t want to miss out on.
Priced at a mere £7.0m in Fantasy Premier League, Bent provides great value out there for managers looking for a proven Premier League goal-scorer to boost their striking wares. At £5.6m in the Telgraph Game, and £6.4m in Fantasy League, Bent fails to sneak under the radar of all the fantasy games and is more in line with the mid to high priced strikers.
Sunderland currently hold one of the most threadbare strikeforces in the Premiership – at the end of last season Kenwyne Jones was the only striker of note remaining on Wearside. Steve Bruce began to rectify this by signing up Fraizer Campbell, but with still relatively little Premier League experience I can’t see the youngster posing any great threat to Mr. Bent’s minutes on the pitch. Providing he avoids injury, Bent should be looking at getting games on a regular basis without much worry.
Those of you keeping a keen eye on pre-season games should also be aware of the cost Bent brings to the rest of the squad. With the wise money on him partnering Jones, those of us that have had our ears pricked by Kieran Richardson this summer could be understandably disappointed. Thriving in ‘the hole’ behind Jones, Richardson has got a fair few goals, with Bent now on Wearside he could very well be asked to hold fire on his play somewhat – and Bent could even put a spanner in the works once more as to who will also be taking the penalties.
Sunderland’s first ten fixtures also lead one to believe Bent could prove a choice pick up front. While having to face off against Chelsea, Manchester United & Liverpool early on, they will also face all three of the newly promoted teams on top of a select bunch of the sides who only just managed to survive the drop last year.
This could be the ideal opportunity to jump-start your points tally early on in the season – so if ever there was extra incentive required for managers to choose Bent, this could very well be it. I tell you all this much, he’s in my team already.