STRIKER Darren Bent spent the last month of 2014 with Championship-struggling Brighton as the hapless Sami Hyypia tried to bring a halt to a dismal run of form.
Unable to command a regular starting spot at Aston Villa, Bent made an encouraging enough start, scoring on his debut against Fulham.
But the game ended in a 2-1 defeat and his only other goal came at Molineux two days before the axe fell on Hyypia’s time in the hotseat as Albion drew 1-1 with Wolves.
Bent told BBC Radio Sussex he’d reached “boiling point” in his frustration at the lack of starts under Paul Lambert at Villa. Previous boss Gerard Houllier had smashed Villa’s transfer fee record to take Bent from Sunderland for an initial £18m in January 2011, but, after Lambert became manager in 2012, he made just 13 Premier League appearances.
At the time he headed to the Amex, Bent had scored 184 goals in 464 career appearances, not to mention scoring four while winning 13 caps for England.
“I hope he will score plenty of goals for us during his time with us,” Hyypia had told the club website. “His record speaks for itself. He is a top-class striker with more than 100 Premier League goals with Charlton, Spurs, Sunderland and Aston Villa.
“Three years ago, he was a regular in the England squad under Fabio Capello; there is no doubting his ability to score goals.
“He also wants to play regular games and that is evident in his willingness to step down from the Premier League to the Championship.”
Bent told the matchday programme: “It doesn’t bother me that I’ve had to drop down a division to play football. Anyone who knows me knows that all I care about is football.
“It has never been about money or anything like that. It has always been about playing football. I’m always at my happiest when I’m playing.”
At least Bent found some familiar faces in the Albion dressing room in fellow Villa loanees Joe Bennett and Gary Gardner and former Fulham teammates David Stockdale and Aaron Hughes.
“Brighton felt like the perfect place to come and play football, especially for someone like Sami Hyypia, who I’ve played against many times over the years,” Bent added. “As a manager, I think he is the right man. He is the kind of guy I want to play for.”
Bent returned to Villa after playing in five games and although new boss Chris Hughton indicated a willingness to bring him back, the striker was soon on his way to Derby County for the remainder of the season.
He scored 12 in 17 games for Steve McLaren’s Rams and subsequently joined them on a permanent basis in the summer of 2015. After two seasons in the Championship with Derby, scoring 14 in 67 matches, a hamstring injury sidelined him for the start of the 2017-18 season and in January 2018 he went on loan to Championship strugglers Burton Albion.
Having been without a club since released by Derby in the summer of 2018, he announced his retirement at 35 in July 2019.
Since then, he has joined the football pundit circuit, although not everyone is convinced he’s making that good a job of it!
Nevertheless, Talksport and Sky Sports are happy to give him a platform and, in an interview with Metro, he suggested what might be the most difficult aspect of it. “I played with some of these guys and regard them as friends so, when they have had a bad game, will I be able to dig them out? It’s finding the line between being objective and respectfully constructive.”
Only in January 2020, Bent could be found arguing the case for Lewis Dunk to be recalled by England. The former striker is also active on Twitter with @DarrenBent attracting just short of 492,000 followers.
Born in Tooting, south London, on 6 February 1984, Bent was probably destined to be a footballer because his dad Mervyn had been on the books of Wimbledon and Brentford as a youngster.
The family moved to Cambridgeshire when the young Bent was only 10 and his early football career was nurtured at Godmanchester Rovers.
Ipswich Town picked him up as a 14-year-old and nurtured him through their youth ranks until he eventually made it to the first team in November 2001.
In four seasons with Ipswich, he scored 56 goals in 141 appearances before then Premier League Charlton Athletic paid a fee of £2.5m to take him to The Valley.
After two successful seasons in which he bagged 37 goals in 79 games for the Valiants, he made another big money move, this time to North London to join Spurs.
It was in June 2007 they paid a club record £16.5m and he scored 25 in 79 games for them before a similar fee saw him move to Sunderland, then in the Premier League, in the summer of 2009.
After 18 months in the North East, Bent put in for a transfer and Aston Villa paid £24m to sign him on a four-and-a-half year contract. He marked his debut with the only goal of the game in a win over Manchester City.
In his second season with Villa, Bent took on the captaincy for a while but managerial changes meant his face didn’t always fit and he spent the whole of the 2013-14 season on loan to Fulham, where he scored six in 30 matches.
His performances earned him the Young Player of the Year accolade even though his season was cut short by injury.
The Portuguese youngster scored again four days later, 
Captain Steven Gerrard 
VETERAN Northern Irishman Aaron Hughes only brought down the curtain on his lengthy playing career in June 2019 at the age of 39.
Eyebrows were raised when former Northern Ireland manager Bryan Hamilton took Hughes to Portugal for a World Cup qualifier in October 1997, when he was still only 17, but Hamilton told the Belfast Telegraph: “There was something special in him, even at a young age, and I wanted him in the squad. I felt he could be an outstanding player for Northern Ireland and I knew that coming in early wouldn’t affect or faze him.”
At Fulham, he formed a formidable defensive partnership with Brede Hangeland and fulhamfc.com said: “The pair worked brilliantly together, with the fans soon referring to them as our very own Thames Barrier. Their styles complemented each other perfectly, and while Hughes wasn’t the tallest of centre-backs, his leap and reading of the game more than made up for it.”
In parallel lines 