Villa do Well from Downing Deal

As a Tottenham fan, a few years back I went through maybe two or three summers of annoyance. In that period, we were a team (seemingly) on the verge of challenging for at least a Champions League place - a team with a great set of forwards, but also a team that was lacking one critical component: a left-winger. Funnily enough we now have one of the best left-wingers in the world, and our forward line is mediocre. Irritating. But I digress.

The point is, in that seemingly endless search for a left-winger a lot of good opportunities seemed to pass us by. We were on the verge of signing Martin Petrov from Atletico Madrid before Man City offered him more money, and deals for players like Morten Gamst Pedersen never seemed to materialise. This was annoying, but there was one player I was always happy to avoid: Stewart Downing.

I've been kind of smug and "I told you so" about it as well, to my shame. Any time I watch one of his typically average performances in an England shirt, or see him make a mistake for Villa (or for Middlesbrough, before his move), I am always the first to say that Downing is "£15 million of dodged bullet".

Recently, though, I've been experiencing some...doubts. I thought for so long Downing was an incredibly overhyped player, but last season he matured very well at Aston Villa and did a fine job. Anyone who knows me will tell you I hate to be proven wrong and I would not say Downing has done that yet - in my eyes he was too average for too long, and his continued appearances for England exemplified everything wrong with the Mclaren era, especially with other left-wing options like Matt Taylor in great form - but he has certainly done enough to get me to shut up about him. Or at least to criticise him slightly less.

Downing has matured a lot since a
succession of poor performances for England

I'm certainly willing to admit Downing isn't the overrated waste of time I once thought he was. It may have been a bad season for Aston Villa that saw them needing to emergency-buy Darren Bent to shoot themselves out of trouble, but the form of Downing (and Marc Albrighton) was a clear positive, and he earned Villa's "player of the year" award.

Indeed, such good form has caused Liverpool to buy him for a reported £20 million fee. That's about twice what I would have paid for him - but then Villa had no real reason to sell their player of the year, especially since they had already sold Ashley Young for an undisclosed (but, presumably, considerable) sum of money. Villa immediately began searching for a replacement, and found one in Wigan winger Charles N'Zogbia.

N'Zogbia is an excellent player, and has been performing well since his Newcastle days. Wigan picked him up in January 2009 in what was a very shrewd piece of business - they took advantage of then-Newcastle manager Joe Kinnear's "Charles Insomnia" jibe to buy a player that has probably single-handedly ensured they avoided relegation in the last three seasons.

Importantly, Villa will purchase N'Zogbia for a £9.5 million fee - less than half of what they allegedly sold Stewart Downing for. I am not necessarily knocking the purchase of Downing by Liverpool; he is most certainly a better crosser than N'Zogbia, and with Andy Carroll as their main striker, it is a smart buy for a team lacking real wide threats.

However, Villa have done some smart business here as well. I don't think they will go down, even with the loss of players like Downing and Young. This will be the first time in several seasons they have not beein in the Europa League, though they can be expected to be challenging again soon - they will be able to concentrate more on the Premier League, too, without that distraction.

On the other hand, Wigan would be one of the teams regarded as a favourite for the drop. So from N'Zogbia's perspective, it makes sense to move to a bigger club, on a higher level. They can be expected to be paying N'Zogbia more than he was earning at Wigan, too.

Downing may have commanded double
N'Zogbia's fee, but he is not double the player

Villa still have some weaknesses - they could be stronger in the central midfield and full-back positions, for instance, but in N'Zogbia they get a winger that can provide balance to their team and possibly mean they end up with a 4-3-3 formation, with N'Zogbia and Albrighton as two wingers supporting Bent as a lone striker. N'Zogbia brings the pace and dribbling of Ashley Young, but brings the balance of a left-footed winger that Stewart Downing once did - he is a very intelligent acquisition that fills two niches at once.

That's not to say N'Zogbia isn't without his problems. He was far from blameless in the spat that caused him to leave Newcastle and his impressive performances with Wigan might be indicative of a player who likes being a big fish in a small pond. Ultimately, though, N'Zogbia is more or less on the same level as Downing and Villa have done an excellent job here - provided McLeish can keep him focussed and make the system work.

Why Does Mediocrity Seem to Follow Darren Bent Around?

I don't particularly want this blog to be regarded as too "edgy" or contrarian (or do I? Maybe criticising the Old Firm rivalry in my first post wasn't the best way to go), but watching England's tepid performance against Switzerland the other day reminded me of how I feel about Darren Bent, so here's blog entry number two.

Well, maybe overrated isn't the right word. My problem with Bent isn't related to a shortage of "talent" - he is undoubtedly an excellent goalscorer - it's more the fact that in the modern game, Bent simply cannot succeed at the highest level.

Journalist Hugo Asch once said that modern-day forwards are "a combination of tanks and Formula One cars". A prime example of this is Didier Drogba, who is as fast and powerful as they come. Players like Fillipo Inzaghi and Michael Owen have been left behind by the development of the modern game; they're simply too one-dimensional to work in the lone-striker systems so many teams operate now. Defending now is too good, players too fit, to provide the little half-chances that the likes of Owen used to pounce on. Hanging on the shoulder of the last defender isn't enough either.

Bent is not quite as archaic; he is faster and stronger than both players (now, anyway; Owen was the faster player before being plagued by injury), and can lead the line with some effectiveness even in an environment as physical as the Premier League. However, he is not quite tall or dominating enough to be a target-man like Liverpool striker Andy Carroll - but he is faster, and a better finisher. He is not refined enough to create anywhere near as well as Wayne Rooney - but he is faster, and a better finisher. He also lacks the dynamism of someone like Jermain Defoe. Bent does sport several advantages over the dimunitive Tottenham man, but it is what Defoe can do outside the box that has ensured Defoe has far more international caps.

Bent transferred to Aston Villa in January
for a fee potentially as high as £24 million

Top-notch strikers now need to be able to create chances for themselves on a regular basis. Carroll can do that with sheer force; Rooney can do that with his inventiveness; Defoe with his dynamic movement and occasionally by running at defenders and full-backs, cutting inside to shoot. Bent simply does not do this often enough. This might go some way to explaining the fact that he was snubbed for World Cup Squads in both 2006 and 2010. In the world of top-level international football, dominated by multi-functional players, Bent falls a little short.

It is possibly because of this that despite the impressive scoring record (Bent has scored the most goals in the Premier League since 2005), no top club has taken a gamble on him and he has a conspicuous lack of England caps. In fact, one can draw another comparison with Michael Owen here; when Newcastle purchased Owen from Real Madrid in 2005, no top club was prepared to pay the £18 million fee. Much like Bent, in the modern-day game Owen is a good player to have (as Manchester United do now - tellingly, on a free transfer) but he is not a player to consistently rely on at the top level of the game.

Bent's highest league finish remains 8th, with Tottenham in 2008/09 - a finish that could be put down in many ways to the remarkable revival that took place under Harry Redknapp and continued after Bent left the club the following summer. Before Bent's spell at Tottenham, the London club finished 5th twice. Since Bent has left, they have finished 4th and 5th. It would be foolish to say that Bent is the only reason for this; Tottenham had a variety of issues in those seasons, all the way up to the boardroom. However, to ignore the conundrum and problems he caused would be equally foolish.

In 2006/07, Tottenham had Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov in top form. Both are creative strikers that were also able to finish, and it is because of this that they combined so effectively. Bent was added to the mix and it all fell apart.

The next season, with Keane and Berbatov gone, Tottenham changed the way they played and loaded up on attacking midfielders and wingers to provide the creativity; Giovani Dos Santos, Luka Modric and David Bentley were brought in to play behind and support Bent.

Bent continued to feed on scraps and scored a few goals, but Tottenham as a team were even worse. Luka Modric spent most of that season deployed just off the striker, in contrast to his current position of Central Midfield. In order to form a synergy with a player of Modric's class, the striker needs to be savvy and with a creative eye. Bent lacks that, and that is the difference. It is what makes him a player who, in the modern game, simply cannot work at the highest level.

Maybe, then, pundits should be less surprised when wondering why Bent fails to make the England squad, why he is not an automatic starter and why he hasn't found himself at a top club yet. Oddly enough, I didn't think the fee Aston Villa paid for him was as extortionate as some made it out to be. It is a fee that potentially rises to £24 million, but for Villa, relegation would be far more costly.

That transfer is probably Darren Bent in a nutshell; he turned not-long promoted Sunderland into a solid, midtable side and now he will probably solidify Aston Villa as well. But that's all; one could say that Bent is more of a survivor than he is a winner. Chelsea, Manchester United et al want to do more than just survive, and the same must surely ring true with England.

There's no conspiracy when it comes to leaving Bent out of the England starting XI; just savvy managers knowing his shortcomings. His recent resurgence in an England shirt has been good, but at a World Cup or European Championship, it is likely that he will be found out - or left out.