Darren Bent Can Get Over Horror Miss and Prove the Doubters Wrong

Bent is, and has always been, a sideshow figure in North London. The fans have never warmed to him and apparently nor has his two managers.

I personally wonder why this is. He was always going to play second fiddle to Berbatov and Keane and no one can argue with that. But once they departed, and Bent was given an extended run in the team, the goals started to flow and at one stage he headed the Premiership’s top scorer charts with 12 goals currently to his name.

And this wasn’t by accident. For Charlton, he scored an amazing 32 goals in 68 games and was the highest scoring Englishman in the Premier League in the 2005-06 season.

While for Ipswich, the love felt for the local lad at Portman Road was completely poles apart from the current emotions shown by the Tottenham faithful. Bent was one of our own so he was always on to a winner. And with confidence in his own performance matched by the terraces, he scored 49 goals in 121 games.

Those halcyon days must today seem like a lifetime ago for Bent, culminating in yesterday's horror miss in front of the SKY cameras. There comes a time for many players when they realise they have to leave or risk their career going nowhere.

That time has come for Darren Bent if he wants to have any chance of restoring his reputation and maybe even staking another claim for a place in Fabio Capello’s England squad.

I maintain that with an extended run in many Premier League teams, and with the right backing from a different manager and new fans, the boy will once again come good.

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