Off work and watching TV on Thursday, I saw David Bentley talking about Tottenham on Sky Sports News.
I vaguely remembered him.
Checked him out and sure enough, he is a former Tottenham player.
David Bentley is from Peterborough and grew up a Man U fan, was with Arsenal as a kid but didn’t make it. Ended up having a couple of good seasons with Blackburn, then at the age of 23 got a massive five year contract at Tottenham in a big money move and that was pretty much the end of his career!
In his five years on the books of Tottenham, he made 42 appearances and scored two goals. During that time, Bentley was so poor that he ended up getting sent out on loan to a number of clubs but failed to impress.
At the age of 28 he came to the end of his lucrative Tottenham contract in June 2013 and never played professionally again.
A year later David Bentley announced his ‘retirement’ from playing, claiming he had fallen out of love with football and wanted to spend time with his family.
Anyway, now aged 41, Bentley seems to have suddenly rediscovered his love for football and/or is wanting to earn some extra cash, so now finds himself a Tottenham expert on Sky Sports.
David Bentley declaring yesterday: “Tottenham could be the biggest club in the world. And to think of that potential being relegated and sitting in the Championship. Not only financially, but emotionally for…I think for everyone in football. I don’t think there is anyone in football that wants to see Tottenham go down and not be in the Premier League. I think everybody loves watching Tottenham, even if they are neutral. Everybody loves Tottenham, who doesn’t like Spurs? Come on, flamboyant Tottenham.”
I nearly fell off the sofa laughing.
He is desperate for work!
A bit like all those other desperate characters who managed to play a handful of matches for one of the media’s favoured London clubs, it seems like David Bentley will carve out a niche for the likes of Sky Sports, Talksport and whoever. Just like the woeful Jason Cundy and Jamie O’Hara, who also played a handful of matches for Tottenham. The pair of them will say absolutely anything to get attention doing their media stuff.
David Bentley declaring: “Tottenham could be the biggest club in the world” and how no neutral would want to see them relegated…words fail me.
If this was Newcastle United and one of our former players talking about NUFC like that, he would be absolutely ridiculed. When it is the likes of a London club like Tottenham though, the media act very differently.
David Bentley caused me to recall an excellent book I read by Richard Dawkins, not about football by the way. “The God Delusion” saw Dawkins argue that a supernatural creator (a God) does not exist, and that belief in a personal God qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief that is held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. In the book, he went on to say that when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.
It sounds like Tottenham is a newly discovered religion for David Bentley, with no doubt the likes of Cundy and O’Hara as delusional fellow believers. Thinking the rest of us are suddenly going to accept at some point, that Spurs are the biggest club in the world!