Young: Bent could be missing link
Luke Young believes Darren Bent can give Charlton extra impetus to push for a European spot by becoming the 15-to-20-goals-a-season striker the club have lacked in the Premiership.
Bent was snapped up from Ipswich for £3m (€4.4m) in the summer and he is already looking a bargain after grabbing his fifth goal in four matches to secure a 1-0 win at Birmingham.
It enabled manager Alan Curbishley to celebrate his 600th league match in charge of The Addicks in the perfect way and they will go into Saturday’s top of the table clash with Chelsea boasting a 100% record.
Charlton have flirted with qualifying for the UEFA Cup on several occasions only to often fade out of the picture in the final quarter of the campaign.
A lack of a consistent marksman has been one reason for that with the highest Premiership goal tally in a season just 11 by Jonatan Johansson in 2000-2001.
But Bent, the Barclays Player of the Month for August, has scored goals at will for Ipswich and the England Under-21s and his promotion to the senior squad for the World Cup qualifiers with Wales and Northern Ireland was well deserved.
England full-back Young said: “I’ve watched clips of Darren scoring freely in the Championship and he just looks like a natural goalscorer to me and he will score goals at any level.
“He doesn’t even warm up. He just runs out there and he just loves smashing the ball in the back of the net so that sums it up for me.
“We perhaps haven’t had someone who can get 15-20 goals in previous seasons and all through the game he just looks like a threat throughout the 90 minutes of a game.
“He has been getting on the end of crosses, scoring with his feet and with his head, and he just looks like a complete striker at the moment.
“He has settled straight in. He is a likeable chap. He is bubbly around the training ground. He loves football. That’s Darren Bent for you really.”
Young added: “If you look at it, every season up until the last 10 games we are always in or around fifth/sixth position, in with a great chance of doing something and forever reason we don’t quite do it.
“You can see that we are there or thereabouts, pushing for Europe, and with the signings this season I don’t see why we can’t do it.
“In my opinion in the last few seasons the legs have just run out of steam in the squad. When Charlton win a game normally, it is normally 100 miles per hour stuff and we are all in fifth gear.
“By the end of the season there are a few tired legs out there and we can’t quite finish things off. That’s the idea of bringing in so many players this season and hopefully we can sustain things all the way through.”
Blues' third home defeat in a row spoilt the end of a memorable week for Northern Ireland keeper Maik Taylor, who was one of the heroes in the win over England at Windsor Park.
But he is convinced better times times will soon lie ahead for Steve Bruce’s side if they reproduce their showing of the second 45 minutes when they laid siege to the Charlton goal.
Jermaine Pennant and Julian Gray supplied a stream of telling crosses and City missed the threat of Emile Heskey, who limped off with an ankle injury after only nine minutes.
Taylor said: “It was a frustrating first half. For whatever reason we didn’t play well at all but if you give Charlton time and space they have got really good quality through the middle of the park and up front that can hurt you.
“A few words were said at half-time and in the second period we forced them to defend for long periods, peppered their goal but unfortunately nothing really fell kindly for us.
“We can’t take anything from the first half but the second 45 minutes were far more positive and we won’t be far wrong if we can continue to play like we did in the second half for a full 90 minutes.
“The first half was just not good enough. We are far, far better than that. For whatever reason we weren’t at the races, Charlton got the goal and made it an uphill task. But we did everything but score in the second half.”
| Related Stories: |
|
