Premier League football - thanks for that, Darren. Without your 24 goals, our hapless squad would certainly have been relegated. Nowadays, I prefer to look at Quinn, Milliband &co. and pray for the day when little Sunderland can afford someone remotely as good as you. Because that's the truth - we know you were worth what you asked, and more, but we just couldn't afford it. Other clubs have been selling merchandise around the world since 1958 while we slumbered in our own little world and let it all pass us by. Hopefully, now, we're heading in the right direction and selling ourselves like a professional club should do, but unfortunately, it's too late to avoid losing one of the finest strikers it's ever been our privilege to watch. There's no point in hate - it's just where you and Sunderland were at that point in time - too big for the club, too small for the player. Best wishes, mate, and thanks for what you did for us. Some of us will never forget it. Others will always blame the messenger for the message. But that's their problem. Good luck.
I'm sorry but we rescued Bent's career and gave him a fabulous contract..Villa offered him more only after we we got his career back on track...He sold us down the river for his twenty pieces of silver, and I sincerely hope that he gets loads of stick, but more importantly we beat his team...
You're right RAW, we did rescue his career, as he admits in the article. But he rescued us from relegation too - no point in denying that. God knows, we weren't that far off it even with him. We both got something from his spell here. But blame the messenger for the message if you want - I doubt very much that you'll be alone in that!
As a north easterner born in fulwell.....SAFC supporter for 40 years I have always thought that we as a tribe we were different from the the rest of the uk....not by much mind you, just a little bit .....you know we share 67% of our DNA with a banana...98% of a chimps DNA is the same as ours......its the last 2% of the DNA the special stuff that put a man on the moon and allows our minds to appreciate the finer things in life......such as a beautiful woman , a fine goal scorer!and the abillity to judge a persons character.... We are simple folk...we like honesty and trustworthiness .We put a premium on endevour, effort and,bravery....WE take people at face value and honour and trust their word .We do not like double dealing,lying,cheating and most of all we hate being made a fool of...............As for Bent that melevolant bogart of a man , an amalgam of six foot of scrotal tissue and the worst double dealing slimeball of a human being that the human genome can produce....WE took him in and made him one of us..He could simply have been professional and got on with his job.....but no he had to open his big "event horizon"...we saved his career...loves it up here..wants to play for rest of career with SAFC...while in reality he was within a few months angling for a move.........while taking us for a ride...... I for one will be booooooooooooooooooooooooooing until i run out of ooooooooooos and as for the article in the Mail....once a trust is broken you can see bent for what he is..he would say anything and you cannot trust a word he says....end of...
Jeeze - we get these people on here like a rash. Nothing to contribute but bile, ignorance and stupidity. I guess that pretty much sums any forum troll up which probably accounts for the lack of creativity and original content in their posts.
Don't see why you hate Bent so much, bought for 10 million, stayed for a year and a half, saved you for relegation and left for 24 million for a club who at the moment are clearly the better side. So a 14 million profit in the transfers, and about 50 million made from rescuing from relegation, players rarely stay with a club for their whole career now.
I'm guessing it's because he left for a club who aren't a million miles away from the Mackems. If he left for Man U, Chelsea etc (or at least someone in Europe) you could understand him wanting to play for the top clubs against the best players around the world. When he takes a sideways step to another 'midtable' club just on more money it leaves a bitter taste. Same story with our 'saviour' Carroll. He left for Liverpool who aren't in Europe and were challenging the same sort of places as us. Granted with the money they've spent they will be ahead of us this season but can't see them breaking the big 4.
We spent a large sum of money on Bent. Who is to say we wouldn't have brought someone else into 'save us' from relegation? (Its just as likely as us being relegated.) Or had we not bought Bent or anyone else, would we played with 10 men for the entire season?
You're right in that we could have bought another player with that money. But how many others would have got us 24 goals (and the points that came with it)? If we'd bought say, Defoe, he got 14 goals that season - and we would definitely have been relegated. At the end of the day, we lost the last game of that season, and stayed up simply because the teams below us all lost as well. We scraped it with Bent's 24. Without him, we were dead and buried. Another player that year wouldn't have helped.
You can't say that for definate that we would have been relegated without Bent. Any number of things could have happened, we might have brought in more than one player or a solitary sigining. And who is to say our style of play would have been exactly the same? Yes we could have been relegated without Bent, but we could have also been relegated with him. The same applies if we didn't have Bent that season.
I think we can be certain that our style of play would have been the same because, let's be frank, that's all that squad was capable of. They couldn't play any other way. I agree any number of things could have happened. All we can look at is what did happen. It's all water under the bridge anyway. The point I'm making is that all this hate for Bent amounts to blaming the messenger for the message. The fact is we haven't kept up with the times. Other clubs have been developing their merchandising for decades while SAFC hasn't bothered. O.k. it's no good crying about that now. All we can do is hope Short, Quinn, Milliband and the marketing firm they've brought in can develop that side of things so that, at some point in the future, we can buy players of Bent's standard and keep them. That's the tragedy of the whole thing. Darren Bent asked us for less than half of what some England team-mates are getting - he wasn't being greedy at all by Prem standards - but Sunderland were not in a position to pay it. SAFC needs to move on now, build up our marketing so it doesn't happen again. Blaming the messenger gets us nowhere.
