Happiness is a Club Called Blackburn

You can’t blame David Bentley for being euphoric after scoring a sensational hat-trick against mighty Manchester United. But the trouble with euphoria is that it’s apt to cloud the judgement a little – as Bentley’s comments on both his present and his previous club amply demonstrate.

Like Jermaine Pennant at Birmingham City, Bentley finds it difficult to conceal his bitterness at his failure to make the grade at Arsenal. If that motivates him to be a success now that his permanent move to Blackburn Rovers has been secured, all well and good. But if all it does is to generate unwarranted criticism of Arsenal, coupled with a stubborn refusal to accept that he may not have been good enough to meet the standards demanded there, that cannot be healthy or in the player’s best interests.

Bentley is quoted as saying: “if you are not given a chance, you are never going to play in the team.” The short answer to that is that he was given a chance and he did play in the team. In the 2003-04 season he appeared in a Premiership game, a Champions League game, was a sub in 3 F.A. Cup games and was part of the club’s young side in a successful Carling Cup campaign. During this period he was dubbed ‘the new Denis Bergkamp’ – a description which possibly did more harm than good, but had it been fully justified it can safely be assumed that Arsene Wenger would have selected him more often. As things turned out, however, it is hard to imagine which Arsenal player he felt he had the right to replace – Ljunberg? Pires? Reyes? Van Persie? Bergkamp?

It is also difficult to imagine a more stark contrast between the manager David used to play for and his present boss, Mark Hughes. Evidently, Blackburn Rovers suits him because he insists “I’m at a happy club..you really enjoy coming to work every day”. He’s certainly made a good start and with any luck he may even do well enough to stop being bitter about Arsenal. Time, as they say, is a great healer.