Darren Bent claims player who left Spurs recently has ‘won the lottery’

Darren Bent believes that Matt Doherty would not have been able to believe his luck when Atletico Madrid came in for him on transfer deadline day.

With Pedro Porro arriving at Tottenham on Tuesday, the North London club offloaded both Djed Spence and Doherty to make way for the Spaniard, with the former being loaned out to Rennes and the latter’s contract being terminated before he signed for Atletico.

Football.London’s Alasdair Gold explained on Wednesday that Spurs initially planned on loaning the Irishman to Atletico without an option to buy but decided to terminate his contract once they realised they were already at the limit of first-team players that clubs can loan out (8) as per FIFA’s rules.

Bent has described the deadline day move as ‘bizarre’ and added that the 31-year-old would be counting his lucky stars that Diego Simeone’s men snapped him up despite being deemed not good enough for Spurs.

The pundit told talkSPORT (01/02/23): “My most bizarre signing, it’s someone leaving the Premier League. Matt Doherty and how it happened.

“He’s going on loan to Atletico, they say ‘no’, so Spurs go ‘we will terminate his contract, so he can sign for you permanently’.

“He has woken up and he can’t believe his luck. He was initially going on loan, which was bonkers in itself – that move, he wasn’t deemed good enough for Spurs and he’s gone to Atletico Madrid. He’s won the lottery.”

Spurs Web Opinion

Kieran Tripper was also deemed not good enough at Spurs he did very well at Atletico. Sometimes, it just does not work out for some players at certain clubs and that does not make them bad players. 

I believe that Doherty’s time at the club could have turned out a lot differently had he not picked up the knee injury against Aston Villa in April of last year just as he was becoming an important player for the side.

The former Wolves man took his time to work his way back to full fitness at the start of the season and he simply did not get a run of games after that to rebuild his confidence. 

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