“Do I wanna go Hull City NO. Do I wanna go Stoke NO do I wanna go Sunderland YES so stop f***ing around, Levy. Sunderland are not the problem in the slightest.”
It is now almost 14 years since Darren Bent sent that infamous tweet in an attempt to accelerate his Tottenham departure but, while it was swiftly deleted at the time, he’s unlikely to ever be allowed to forget about it.
Speaking to us via EFL on Quest, we know why Bent wanted out of Tottenham, but why was he so sure about Sunderland?
The Black Cats had finished 16th in 2008-09 and only avoided relegation on the final day of the season thanks to Newcastle United’s 1-0 defeat to Aston Villa. Roy Keane had started the season in charge before Ricky Sbragia took over in December. Sunderland scraped to safety despite losing nine of their last 12 league games.
Sbragia promptly resigned after a final day defeat to Chelsea and in came Steve Bruce. It’s safe to say Bruce is, at best, a polarising figure in the North East, but one call from the new manager was all it took to convince Bent he needed to make the Stadium of Light his new home.
“I’m going to ask you one question, do you want to come and play centre-forward for Sunderland?,” Bruce asked Bent. “Listen, I don’t want you to do anything else but score goals. Don’t worry about anything else, just score goals. Once you do that, everything will fall into place.”
Bent is getting increasingly excited recalling the time: “And it did. And it was superb. I created opportunities, I scored goals, I was in the England squads. It was probably the best season I ever had, but that’s because I was happy off the pitch. He was key to that.”
The striker had moved to the North East with his career at something of a crossroads. After honing his craft at Ipswich Town he had taken the Premier League by storm with Charlton, only to struggle for consistency at Tottenham where he was in and out of the starting XI.
He still managed to score 17 goals in all competitions in his second season at Spurs but is best remembered for a miss against Portsmouth after which his manager Harry Redknapp quipped: “My missus could have scored that one.”
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READ: The rise and fall of Darren Bent at Spurs: ‘The hardest two years of my life’
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That didn’t stop Sunderland signing Bent in a then-club-record deal worth a potential £16.5million.
“When you talk about transfer fee it didn’t even faze me one bit,” Bent…
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