Making Plans for Darren: The Last Days of Our Record Signing

Making Plans for Darren – The Last Days of Our Record Signing

Here’s a quick hypothetical for you: you win a few million quid on the lottery. Not a record-breaking amount, but enough to pay off all of your debts, quit the daily grind and buy the Blackadder box-set. After a while, you decide to throw caution to the wind and buy that sports car you’ve always dreamed of. It’s better than you dared hope, but one day, you’re driving down a country lane when another motorist forces you into a ditch. You’re badly shaken, and to top it all, the sports car is dented, scratched, and stuck in a ditch because it doesn’t have the necessary machinery to get it out of the mud.

So here’s the question – do you sell the sports car, because it’s useless at getting you out of a ditch, or do you keep it and resolve to drive it on proper roads where you can really get the best out of it?

Ah, the hypothetical, key strut of the poorly-thought out piece. You thought the sports car was Darren Bent, didn’t you? Well, here’s where the scenario falls down, because if the ditch is the relegation zone, then it follows Darren Bent has been a key component in the situation and is unable to get Aston Villa out of it, and that’s not true. In fact, Darren Bent hasn’t had much to do with anything this season. His most notable contribution was the equaliser against the Baggies back in September, and given his stock wasn’t exactly high then, it must be below the Plimsoll line now.

Once, a player like Darren Bent was a simple man to understand. He made the runs at or behind the opposition defence and gobbled up those simple chances, and more often than not created them too by dint of pace or agility. Short, fat Gerd Muller ended his career with nearly four hundred goals to his name and a garden shed full of medals because he had one job, and that was to score goals. In fact, such was his unassuming personality that being one of the most prolific scorers in history wasn’t enough: he had to release a record and become an alcoholic just to get some press.

And we still love goalscorers: Leo Messi is setting scoring records for fun this year, and the consummate ease with which he clearly gets up Cristiano Ronaldo’s nose is the icing on the cake. We love goalscorers because they provide us with release, and if you’re capable of finding the net on a regular basis then you will be loved. Take a look at the chap heading the Aston Villa scoring charts this season. Christian Benteke is the most popular Belgian since the guy who invented Stella Artois, and it’s not just because he might keep us in the damn division.

So why is it looking increasingly likely that Villa fans will see the back of Darren Bent this summer, and will probably not kick up too much of a fuss about it? On the face of it, it makes no sense: our record signing, he single-handedly kept Villa up in 2011 and came to us at a time when he was acknowledged to be one of the most feared frontmen in European football. On top of that, he appeared from unfashionable Sunderland, who were above us at the time, because he recognised we were a big club in a false position.

The player should be adored, but he’s largely forgotten at the moment by fan and manager alike. Prosaically, Bent has found himself sidelined through injury more often than not this season, with bangs to the foot  the main cause. But in those moments when he’s been available, Bent has barely scraped into the squad, usually in a bunfight between him and other Lambert rejects like Stephen Ireland and Marc Albrighton.

Seeing him play this season is like watching a blind man awaiting the return of his Labrador, unaware that the commotion around him is because the dog is squashed under a sixteen-wheeler. Darren Bent half-heartedly makes runs into channels, gets caught offside without looking, and doesn’t seem to get the concept of being surrounded by players in different-coloured shirts. It’s like watching a computer sprite from the mid-nineties trying to fit into a game of Fifa ’13.

So you can say he’s low on confidence. But is there more to it than that? Paul Lambert took the Aston Villa job with the knowledge that aside from the rainy-day money, he had to work with what he had, and with players like Bent, Richard Dunne and Shay Given, that ought to have been more than enough. But Lambert staked his ground early on when he recognised that with few exceptions, his senior players had no interest in his new direction. The bedrock of Lambert’s success is hard work and energy, and while we lack that for a whole game, the incisive passing that’s led to our brighter moments is based on players finding little gaps, being willing to pull defenders out of position.

Ironically, the latter should work for Darren Bent, given his natural touch and willingness to make donkeys out of braindead defenders. But somehow, you sense it never will. There’s something about Lambert and Bent that will never mix, and that’s always a recipe for an unpalatable brew.

But what of the fans and their apparent siding with Lambert? It’s not so much the words of the Scotsman that are catching our attention, just that his current forward line seems to be the only thing keeping Aston Villa anywhere near safety. The lack of midfield and dissolvable defence are entirely Lambert’s doing, so there’s no hint of a manager cult. It’s that we understand what side our bread is buttered on – Benteke, Weimann and to a lesser extent Agbonlahor have shown Bent how Lambert wants it to be done, and none but the suicidal would change that with seven games to go.

If Bent starts a Villa game again based on anything but illness or injury to another, it’ll be astounding. This summer, he will probably be sold as the asset-stripping continues, and while he’ll be thanked he won’t get tears from many. We’re too close to the edge of a disaster which Bent has had little effect on for him to carry any gravitas.

My one worry is that Bent will end up at the home of another Premier League club where his game will fit in naturally, and he will cause seven kinds of mayhem to an older but no wiser Villa back-line. But the way the current game is, with its emphasis on strikers who do it all (Swiss-Army Forwards, if you will), it’s Bent that’ll be the outcast – the man who sees the point of the game, but who the game doesn’t see the point of.

Chris Stanley