Darren Bent has admitted it was an easy decision to join Tottenham Hotspur during his career despite being a boyhood fan of north London rivals Arsenal
Many Arsenal fans would run away from the opportunity with having anything to do with Tottenham Hotspur, this was not the case for Darren Bent where he has admitted putting his career before the team he supported as a child.
Bent made the switch to White Hart Lane in June 2007 for a then club record transfer fee of of £16.5million from Charlton Athletic (Guardian).
Bent had a two-year spell at Tottenham where he scored 25 goals in 79 appearances in all competitions and was a guest earlier today on Sky Sports’ Goals on Sunday show.
The striker was sold to Sunderland at the end of his second season at White Hart Lane despite topping the scoring charts during the previous campaign and fell down the pecking order after Harry Redknapp brought Peter Crouch to the cub.
Presenter Ben Shephard questioned Bent on his move to Tottenham asking (as quoted by The Telegraph): “You moved from Charlton to Spurs, that was a big move at the time.
“Do you remember that sort of time? We’ve got some footage of you as a whippersnapper. Do you remember that day?”
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Bent replied: “I do remember that day to be fair.
“I remember I was torn at the time because I was going to West Ham funnily enough.
“I’d been to meet [then West Ham manager] Alan Curbishley, come back from holiday, obviously I knew Alan Curbishley really well, he had taken me from Ipswich to Charlton.
“But obviously I ended up going to Spurs because obviously I felt Spurs were going in the right direction, they finished fifth.
“I was competing with some top strikers there in [Dimitar] Berbatov, [Jermain] Defoe and [Robbie] Keane.”
Shephard asked Bent about his previous affiliation to the Gunners: “Arsenal fan as a kid so was there any sort of split there?”
Bent insisted that he put his career and aspirations to play for a bigger club as his priority, he added: “No not really, Spurs are a massive club,”
“Yeah I was an Arsenal fan but it’s about career and playing for a massive football club.
“At the end the decision was pretty easy to be fair.
“To be fair for my development as well I wanted to go there and compete with these kind of guys.
“As I said Keane, Berbatov and Defoe – it doesn’t get much better than that.”
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