Darren Bent has admitted that, while he was playing for Charlton, he was still sneaking in as an Arsenal supporter on Champions League nights. The former England striker said he would sit in the crowd wrapped up and watch Arsenal in midweek, long before his name ended up on Tottenham’s team sheet.
That detail has found fresh interest because Bent later became Tottenham’s club record signing, arriving at White Hart Lane for £16.5million in 2007. He said the move came after two solid seasons for Charlton in the first tier, but the old allegiance still sits awkwardly alongside the transfer that made him Spurs’ most expensive player at the time.
Bent did not try to soften it. He said plainly that he was an Arsenal fan when he played, though he added that football has a way of changing that feeling once it becomes work. “Because it’s your job, in that environment the fan gets knocked out of you,” he said, explaining how the routine of the game gradually pushed the supporter out of him.
The former Charlton forward began his career at Ipswich Town, but it was the spell in south London that produced the oddest admission of his playing days. He said he used to watch Arsenal in the Champions League on midweek nights while he was at Charlton, taking in the team he supported from the stands while still earning his living in the Premier League.
The contradiction only grows sharper because of where Bent went next. When Tottenham made their move in 2007, he said his first thought was not delight but disbelief. “Oh my goodness, I’m going to Tottenham,” he recalled, before saying people around him pushed the deal through: “You have to go to Tottenham. You have to go. You have to.”
That move put him at the heart of one of English football’s fiercest rivalries, and it also set up a difficult second act. Bent said he and Harry Redknapp quickly fell out during his second season at Spurs, after Redknapp reportedly joked that his wife could have scored the chance Bent missed against Portsmouth in January 2009. “It weren’t great,” Bent said of that period, adding that the remark “blew up” and that it was harsh, even if Redknapp was trying to be funny.
He also said he felt Redknapp’s plans shift around him as the squad changed, with the manager bringing back Jermain Defoe and wanting Peter Crouch. “From there, our relationship just went completely opposite directions,” Bent said. But he stressed that the bad spell is behind them now. “But we’re fine now, and we get on now,” he said, closing the circle on a rivalry, a transfer and a fan allegiance that once sat in the same career.
