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#3 Darren Bent on wanting to move from Tottenham to Sunderland, 2009
“Do I wanna go Hull City NO. Do I wanna go Stoke NO. Do I wanna go Sunderland YES so stop f***ing around Levy”
In the summer of 2009, Tottenham striker Darren Bent wanted out of White Hart Lane, but he was very specific on exactly where he wanted to go, to the point where he decided a foul-mouthed Twitter rant against Spurs chairman Daniel Levy was the way forward.
Bent had been signed for a club-record £16.5m by Juande Ramos in the summer of 2007, but despite finishing 2008/09 as Tottenham’s top scorer, new manager Harry Redknapp clearly didn’t rate him as highly as his predecessor. And so in July 2009, Sunderland opened negotiations with Spurs to sign the player.
The snag was that Spurs chairman Daniel Levy didn’t want to lose money on the striker, but Sunderland didn’t want to spend more than £15m. So Levy apparently offered Bent to Hull and Stoke instead, triggering the player’s wild rant on Twitter.
Cooler heads eventually prevailed, as Bent closed down the Twitter account before apologising, saying that he’d acted out of frustration. And after agreeing a fee – an initial £10m rising eventually to £16.5m – he was on his way to the Stadium of Light, with both parties eventually having gotten exactly what they wanted.
