Sunderland are still paying the price for failing to pay Darren Bent what he wanted

To lose one top class striker is careless, to lose two unfortunate, to lose three a concern, to lose four downright worrying.

Steve Bruce has had Kenwyne Jones, Darren Bent, Asamoah Gyan and Danny Welbeck leading the line since he became Sunderland manager in May 2009, but all four are now playing elsewhere.

It is not necessarily the manager’s fault, he has been forced to let some leave, as well as forced others out, but Sunderland’s inability to hold on to their goal getters is the failing that undermines them most.

Jones’ lethargy could infuriate a saint renowned for his patience, so Bruce sacrificed him to bring in Gyan, who in turn thanked him by agitating to leave as soon as his agent – or agents – told him he to.

The Ghana international scored 13 goals in his first season in England, had been tipped by Bruce to break the 20 barrier in pre-season, only to pack his bags at the weekend for the footballing, erm, Mecca of Al-Ain and Abu Dhabi.

An error in character assessment may well have been Bruce’s only crime there, while Welbeck did so well on loan at Sunderland last season he has returned to Manchester United and kept both Dimitar Berbatov and Michael Owen out of the side. Bruce cannot be blamed for the failure to persuade Sir Alex Ferguson to let him return for another year.

The manager deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt on two others. Jones continues to infuriate at Stoke, a team with a style of play which should fit him perfectly, while Gyan, at 25, has either been badly advised, or blinded by cash, to swap the Premier League for the United Arab Emirates.

Bent, though, is another matter. Sunderland’s problems effectively began the moment he decided he’d had enough on Wearside and it is difficult to escape from the feeling more should have been done to keep him, no matter the financial cost.

In January, before Bent handed in his transfer request and left for Aston Villa, Sunderland were sixth in the Premier League and pushing for a European place.

Fast forward to September and the Black Cats have won just one game at the Stadium of Light since New Year’s Day and have scored just twice in five games this season.

Bent, meanwhile, has banged in ten for Villa in just 21 appearances and forced his way, not just back into the England squad, but until injury forced him to miss the European Championship qualifiers against Bulgaria and Wales, Fabio Capello’s starting line-up.

Like Gyan, at the route of Bent’s grievance with Sunderland was money. After one excellent season at the Stadium of Light, he wanted to renegotiate his contract, which was worth around £40,000-a-week and asked for £60,000.

He used interest from Turkish club Fenerbache to put pressure on Bruce and the board, threatened to leave, and didn’t.

With a huge proportion of turnover already spent on wages, Sunderland refused to bend to Bent’s demands and bad feeling festered.

Quinn argued the striker had only signed a deal 12 months earlier and been happy with the terms on offer then. He feared, with good reason, that should Bent get a big pay rise after one good season at the start of a four year deal, others would expect the same.

The bad feeling was fuelled further by the striker’s decision to pursue a personal relationship with the manager’s daughter, Amy, but Bent, Sunderland’s talisman and symbol of ambition, lost his way and Sunderland lost the player that made a good side a potentially excellent one.

Transfer requests were handed in and rejected. Bent wanted, to coin a phrase from the Hip-Hop music he loves, “get paid” and knew he would if he left to join another club looking for a 20 goal a season centre forward.

Bent had the game’s most valuable commodity, goals, and wanted to earn his market value. There was little thought of loyalty or gratitude for Sunderland rebuilding his career after two confidence-draining seasons at Tottenham, but he is not alone there in a game where money does not just talk, it shouts and screams and stamps its foot for attention.

The question is, should Sunderland have agreed to his demands?

From a pure footballing perspective, of course they should, but Sunderland would never dream of playing in black and white and neither is this issue.

Keep Bent happy and they kept one of the best centre-forwards in the division, but risked upsetting others, not least owner Ellis Short who has covered the club’s losses for the last three years.

Bent wanted too much too soon as far as Sunderland were concerned. Unfortunately, for them, Villa were prepared to pay him what he wanted and Bent’s goals for them ensured they stayed clear of relegation last term.

Sunderland are a poorer side without Bent, that is obvious, but Bruce will build again. The signing of Nicklas Bendtner from Arsenal could prove an inspired one. Young, hungry and with a point to prove, the Dane needs Sunderland almost as much as they need him over the next nine months.

Bruce needs goals, from somewhere, anywhere. With Gyan gone, Sunderland will have to lean far more heavily on South Korean Ji Dong-Wong and the 18-year-old Connor Wickham than they ever intended and that is a risk.

With Fraizer Campbell still to return from a second serious knee injury in the space of two years in the spring and with money to spend in January on Gyan’s replacement, Sunderland have room for improvement, but Bruce has to get them to that window first.

Goals win games and Sunderland desperately need one of those to ensure a disappointing start to the season does not turn into a terrible one. Bent is sorely missed.

Everton gripped by identity crisis as People take on Club

Just after 2pm on Saturday afternoon, just as Goodison Park’s grizzled veterans are settling their nerves in the Winslow Hotel, they will be presented with the sight of 400 Everton fans emerging on to Goodison Road, bearing banners and bellowing slogans, on a long, slow march to the ground’s Directors’ Entrance. Once there, the 400 will call for chairman Bill Kenwright, and his board, to go.

To those elder statesmen stiffening their sinews, shielded from the sunlight by the stained glass windows of the Winslow, it will be an alien sight. It is across Stanley Park that fans protest and agitate and call for change, fuelled by a sense of entitlement to success. Not here. This is the People’s Club.

That, though, is the extent of the crisis which has quietly gripped Goodison Park for almost a decade. It has spread beyond simply the financial – how much can they pay, how much can they spend – or the aspirational – where can they finish, what can they win – and into something more serious. This is now a place which has lost its identity, seen a rift driven between People and Club. The crisis is existential.

The Blue Union, the supporters’ group who have called and organised Saturday’s demonstration, insist they stand squarely behind the team and its manager, David Moyes. “Come 3pm, we want Goodison Park rocking,” says Joe Jennings, the group’s spokesman. “Our message is clear. We support the team. We oppose the club’s stagnation.”

That is the paradox. They support the team, but in their undiluted love must attack the club. “It is not a personal issue against the board,” explains Jennings. “We just want the club to be run by someone whose business plan is not simply to cross their fingers and hope for the best. The general consensus is that it is time for change. Some people are happy to tread water. That goes against the club’s motto, Nothing But The Best. We simply want proper Everton values restored.”

Here, another paradox. Everton’s image as the plucky underdogs has been polished and crafted in the Kenwright years; it has become the club’s selling point. They are the standard bearers for the little man, thanks to Moyes’s remarkable success at keeping pace with the Premier League’s princes on a pauper’s budget.

“We have done that using very little cash, wheeling and dealing, selling one biggie and trying to regenerate the cash, keeping it all going,” says the Scot. “In [my] 10 years [in charge], does anyone think Everton could have done better than we have done? I would say probably not.

“In the 10 years I have been here, we have finished in the top 10 seven times. Now if people actually think that Everton should be doing much better than that, then they need to be looking at things. Those positions at the minute for Everton are terrific. If you put it in to perspective, what we have had over the last 10 years has not been outrageously bad.”

Few would disagree. And yet it is worth pointing out at this juncture that Everton are England’s fourth most successful club. When the Premier League started, in 1992, they had won more league titles than Manchester United. Financially, Everton are brave underdogs. Judge them by history, and they are fallen titans. And that, to Jennings, is rather the point.

“I despise that perception,” he says. “Plucky little Everton. That is something that has been invented in the Kenwright era. It sounds odd now but we are one of the sleeping giants not just of this country but of Europe.”

No wonder there is a crisis of identity at Goodison Park. This is a club which has invented a new skin for itself, and found that it does not quite fit. This is a club where, as Moyes admitted yesterday, he is more than just a football manager: “Part of my job is to run a business as well. I have to be a businessman.”

It is a club where, when grilled by a public enquiry into the second proposed move away from Goodison Park two years ago, chief executive Robert Elstone denied Everton were for sale on public record. “Everton Football Club is for sale, despite accusations to the contrary,” Elstone wrote on the club’s official site this week. “This has been the case for three years and will remain the case.”

It is a club which has a chairman whose love for his team has never been in question, but knows it must sacrifice itself on the altar of imported wealth if it is to compete. “Someone summed it up by saying he is living his dream, but ruining ours,” according to Jennings. “There is a lot of romanticism about having a blue in charge, but if we had owners with a plan, who knows what we could achieve.”

Everton is the football club all of those sides – Portsmouth, Birmingham, Newcastle, even – wish they could be, punching above their financial weight, run by a man who used to stand on the terraces, rather than regretting their dances with wolves.

Today’s opponents will look at the protest outside Goodison Park with interest. Aston Villa used to want rid of an owner, too. It worked, eventually, and Doug Ellis was swept from power by Randy Lerner. He seemed the perfect fit. He lovingly restored the stained glass windows at Villa Park, rebuilt the Holte pub. He offered Martin O’Neill money to spend.

This summer, Aston Villa lost Ashley Young and Stewart Downing. “Young accepted he could not win anything with us,” says Jonathan Fear, editor of Vital Villa. “We thought the days of seeing our best players leave were over when Randy took over, but there is only so much he can do. I’d be frustrated if I was him, seeing his attempts to do things the right way rendered useless by silly money spending at Chelsea and Manchester City.”

Villa are one of those clubs held up by Everton as an example of what could be achieved should Kenwright step aside, finally find a buyer, stop suffocating his club with his love. “We do not want a Sheikh,” says Jennings. “We don’t want the club to spend money they do not have. We just know the garden is not always rosy.” The grass, Villa might comment, is not always greener, either.

ENDS