Bent glad he swapped bright lights for SAFC

Sep 12 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

DARREN Bent's move to Sunderland is already giving the striker plenty of reasons to believe he has found the ideal club to bring out the best in him.

IT HAS become increasingly fashionable among football’s short-sighted fashionistas for Sunderland to be ridiculed as a repressed northern backwater with little going for it other than a Premier League football club.

Darren Bent had heard the rumours about the city and had listened to the style-conscious critics in London dismissing the North East as a football outpost, cut off from the rest of the country and lacking the style and substance of other rival English cities.

Bent, though, was not swayed by longstanding prejudices and out-dated regional stereotypes.

If he was going to end two miserable years under the bright lights of White Hart Lane he needed to find a better club suited to his appetite, not just to play football, but to be happy doing it again.

When Bent decided to leave Tottenham Hotspur he was looking for a football club, not a lifestyle. He needed a good manager, not a stylist.

And where others, most notably his England team-mate Peter Crouch, who – under pressure from his ambitious model girlfriend Abigail Clancy – decided he could not stomach a move so far north, Bent’s only fear was the move would collapse because of Spurs’ stubborn negotiations over a price.

“I have settled in here quickly and really taken to it,” said Bent, whose apartment on Gateshead’s Quayside ensures he is on the right side of the river for a Sunderland player. “I know a lot of people who would have chosen London clubs and stayed in the city.

“But for me it is about football clubs and I am most happy when I am playing football.

“I want to be playing 90% of games rather than 40% or 60%. I am happy to do that no matter where it is. Sunderland have a massive following and it has history. It was a rocky rollercoaster journey getting here, but it is always nice when you get your first goal early on. From then I have tried to keep it going.

“The manager has been brilliant and so have the players helping me settle. Sometimes it can be a bit alien coming away from London to somewhere that is miles away, but it has not been a problem. I am liking life at the moment.

“The fans are so passionate. From the chairman, who I have spoken to, who is a Sunderland legend and so enthusiastic about the game, to the supporters. I didn’t want to go anywhere else.”