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Sunderland’s Bruce can’t lecture Bent about loyalty
Much-travelled Sunderland manager Steve Bruce either has a very short memory or the biggest brass neck in football but either way his claim that his club had been let down by Darren Bent’s disloyal move to Aston Villa takes some swallowing.
“It’s hugely disappointing and the players, our supporters and the club as a whole have every right to feel massively let down,” he complained after Bent’s transfer.
Moving from a club in sixth place to one above the drop zone only on goal difference might look odd at first glance, certainly if Bent’s justification for the move about joining a “big club” is to believed, but Bruce is surely the last man to start bleating about loyalty.
As a centre half winning rave reviews with Norwich City back in the 1980s, Bruce told anyone who would listen that he wanted to go to Manchester United.
When he became a manager of Wigan Athletic, he was so loyal that he walked out after two months to go to Crystal Palace. It was Steve Bruce who left Palace four months into his first season to take over Birmingham City.
And surely that was…Steve Bruce who then left Birmingham in acrimonious circumstances to return to Wigan, who he then left to join Sunderland.
Should Alex Ferguson decide to finally retire anytime soon and Manchester United were to enquire about Bruce’s availability to succeed him, how would his loyalty to Sunderland’s “players, supporters and club as a whole” fare then?
Aston Villa’s Bent buy will flummox O’Neill
If eyebrows were raised when Aston Villa decided to spend up to 24 million pounds on striker Darren Bent then former manager Martin O’Neill’s forehead must have been pinned to his living room ceiling when the news broke on Tuesday.
The absurdity of the switch lies not in the inflated figure or Bent’s abilities on the pitch and in front of goal, but in the timing of Villa chairman Randy Lerner choosing to dig deep into his pockets.
O’Neill walked out of the Midlands club just days before the start of the season after being told transfer funds were scarce and the £18 million to be raised from the sale of James Milner to Manchester City would not be reinvested in the squad.
Just six months later, however, Villa have splashed a mammoth fee on a player who has been permanently on the fringes of the England squad while a further six million was spent last week in French midfielder Jean Makoun.
Lerner, who was not shy in ploughing in the pounds prior to putting the brakes on in 2009, issued a statement two days after O’Neill left saying he “no longer shared a common view as to how to move forward”.
O’Neill, he bemoaned, did not appreciate the need to bring wages in line with revenue.
Why are journalists so blind to Martin O’Neill’s limitations. Randy Lerner, who was paying for the Irishmans mistakes, rumbled him and that is why he left. Lerner has given the money to Houllier because the Frenchman moved players on and cut the wage bill. O’Neill, wouldn’t or couldn’t do this. Had O’Neill been able to do so he would have been allowed to spend. Thankfully he wasn’t, or he would have bought another three average Joes and then left two of them warming the bench.
Sure when he was in charge we finished sixth every year but he had a salary bill much higher than Spurs and he needed 30M pounds a year in the transfer market to do it, playing the most awful football among any of the top teams. Villa will finish in the top half this year and next season we’ll be fine.
Would you choose Owen or Bent in a World Cup final?
Imagine the scenario … there are 10 minutes to go in the World Cup final and England are 1-0 down.
Fabio Capello can choose between Michael Owen and Darren Bent to come off the bench and rescue England’s World Cup dream. Who will he turn to?
A man with 40 England goals to his name and bags of international experience who has played for three of Europe’s biggest clubs? Or a striker with four caps, no international goals and a reputation for blowing hot and cold?
It seems Capello, the man credited with dragging England out of the doldrums and restoring their battered reputation, favours the latter.
The England manager effectively banged another nail in Owen’s World Cup coffin by selecting Sunderland’s Bent ahead of him for his squad to face Brazil on Nov. 14th.
And while the Italian says the England door remains open for Owen, his habit of leaving the country’s fourth highest international goalscorer kicking his heels means the above scenario in which he is forced to choose between Owen and another striker is unlikely to occur.
There’s a simple solution: Gabby Agbonlahor. It is true that he often has difficulty actually finishing his opportunities and netting, however, his goal scoring record isn’t too bad, and his blazing pace and his direct runs make him a constant threat to any team’s defense.Either way, he’s a better option than Bent, that’s for sure.
