By Boris Mellor
September 3 2005

David Bentley has accused Arsenal of lacking honesty and loyalty. By that he means that Arsenal have asked for a fee of £4 million for him. In response Bentley has been quoted as saying:

"Arsenal don't know want their players given away for easy money but I've only played one Premiership game for them. If you can judge a player on that, fine."

Now he may have a point, and its true he has had one Premiership start with Arsenal, but then he was on loan with Norwich all last season. And there he appeared in 26 Premiership games. Surely that’s enough to judge him on?

When he first went to Norwich he announced himself as their saviour; he would help keep them up. Not only that but he was prepared to move to them full time, never mind Arsenal, far better first team football at the Canaries, than fight for your place at Highbury. Arsenal Times predicted once Norwich were relegated his protestations of loyalty to them would die away.

After a few months he was dropped for allegedly not putting in enough effort. He got his place back, but then suffered injury, Norwich packed him back off to Arsenal. No loyalty there, but no complaint from him. Then he returned for the last few games of the season, in spite of his efforts they went down, and he returned to Highbury.

One question worth asking is why didn’t Norwich come in for him at the beginning of this season? If one club should know his worth it’s Norwich, they saw him close up.

Some Norwich fans would like to see him return, but some have, unkindly, suggested he is overrated and has a superstar complex.

Its rumoured that the press have a template with a story for English Arsenal starlets, it states that Arsene has it in for English players, and for some strange reason dumps these magically talented, and exotic creatures, for no other reason than an anti English malevolence. All they have to do is fill in the blank with the English name, Upson, Merson, Pennant and now Bentley. No need for any real thought or analysis, just join up the dots.

Perhaps they could try another template, one where Wenger has spent vast sums of money on English talent that has mostly failed, and continued, in most cases, to fail at their next club. A template on English talent that overrates itself, is attracted to lampposts, addictions, night-clubs, secret meetings, and believe that just by turning up they are doing Arsenal a favour.

I am sure they could find a few names to fill in the blanks.