Source: Daily_Mail
Redknapp warns: Football's drinking culture is spiralling out of control
David Bentley should be contemplating the year of his life. Just 12 months after a high-profile £15million move, the 24-year-old with seven England caps should be anticipating the new season with an excitement few of his contemporaries can equal.
Once lauded as the natural England replacement for David Beckham, he was given the freedom of Wembley in Fabio Capello's first England starting XI 18 months ago. Now he would just be grateful to make Harry Redknapp's first team at Tottenham.
Indeed, Bentley will be lucky to make the bench for today's opening game against Liverpool and may instead spend the time dwelling on a forthcoming appearance in court, after being charged last week with drink-driving - which carries the possibility of imprisonment if he is found guilty - having crashed his Porsche into a lamppost following a night out.
Redknapp, 62, has seen it all before. A life immersed in football means there is little that can surprise or shock him. Yet, there is deep regret in his voice when he speaks about the seemingly terminal decline of Bentley's career.
'He needs to lose the image that has grown around him in the past year,' said Redknapp. 'What has happened [the charge] doesn't help him. He has to concentrate on playing football.
'I watched him at Norwich when he was on loan from Arsenal as a teenager and I thought, 'This kid's going to be a great player'.
Technically, he is a great player. He's promised to turn it around, but talk is cheap.'
Bentley's drink-driving charge was especially painful news for Redknapp when he spoke to the player on Friday morning. In 1990, the manager was involved in a fatal car crash during the World Cup in Italy.
The crash killed Redknapp's close friend, Bournemouth managing director Brian Tiler, and four others. Redknapp did not mention his own dreadful experience to Bentley, not wishing to humiliate the player further, yet it was uppermost in his mind.
'Just ask anyone who has lost someone in an accident,' said Redknapp. 'I lost my best mate and four people got killed because a young kid was drunk and driving the other car. I didn't tell Bentley the story about myself - but you simply can't do it.'
Bentley has not yet entered a formal plea to the charge and will appear in court later this month, but he has said sorry to the club and described the charge as 'a wake-up' call.
'I should like to apologise to my club and the supporters for my actions which led to my car accident last night and my subsequent charge,' he said in a statement on the Spurs website.
'It was wholly unacceptable and I fully appreciate that as a professional footballer I have a duty to behave in a reputable and responsible manner.
'I am thankful that nobody was injured in the accident. This has been a wake-up call for me both personally and professionally.'
In the shadow: Bentley must forget comparisons to David Beckham to succeed says Redknapp
The player has never discouraged comparisons with Beckham and appeared to attempt to cultivate a Bentley brand long before his achievements substantiated anything like that.
He once accused senior internationals of playing like robots after scoring the first goal for an England team - the Under-21s - at the new Wembley, but then pulled out of the Under-21 squad that summer for what he claimed was 'the betterment of my career'.
Last season he revelled in scoring a wondrous goal at Arsenal, the team which sold him to Blackburn, and claimed it had made him feel like 'superman'; yet he soon found himself dropped by Redknapp and on the list of players the manager might sell.
Bentley recently signed up to promote a nightclub in Marbella, for whom he appears in publicity pictures which hail him as 'the new David Beckham' and describe him as an England international.
Redknapp, as might be expected, is unimpressed. 'He needs to lose that tag of being another David Beckham. The lads call him 'Becks' but I don't think it helps him. He needs to be himself and develop his own personality with the way he plays football.
'I can see an awful lot of him, where he's modelled himself on Beckham, but I don't think he needs to model himself on anyone. Beckham is a fantastic player but David Bentley has great ability as well.
'He's a great crosser of the ball, great ability on the ball. He's not Beckham, he's Bentley. He's really got to kick that one into touch.'
Promoting a nightclub is also greeted with disdain by Redknapp, a manager who came up through an era in which a post-match drinking session was encouraged but has adapted his standards to the current age.
'I don't think he needs to be involved in nightclubs in Spain or whatever,' said Redknapp. 'He needs good advice from whoever looks after him off the field. The advice he needs from a good agent is to concentrate on his football.
'I don't see any reason for players to be involved in nightclubs. I think it's a no-goer, the drinking one, the nightclub. All problems in football come through drinking; not just here but at other clubs.
'Rewards are so fantastic these days, they're not the average man in the street who works all week and looks forward to Friday and Saturday and having a booze.
'These are super-fit athletes who are earning incredible amounts of money. They have to be able to look after themselves for nine months a year. Once summer comes, if they want to go off and enjoy six weeks on holidays that's not a problem.
'But while we're here, I don't see any reason why a drink should be part of what they're supposed to be doing.
'I'd like to see David get his career going again and I'd like to help him get back playing for Tottenham. There was a lot of talk about Aston Villa coming in for him, so obviously his agent was talking Villa up. But we had no offers and I spoke to Martin O'Neill and there was no truth in that. He's here, we bought him and paid good money for him.
'He needs to look at Luka Modric, who just gets on with his job. There wouldn't be a million miles difference in ability between the two.
'A year ago David was in the England squad and he's got to get back to that again. If he was to have a great season, to graft and turn it around, he could end up making the World Cup squad, which at the moment looks a million miles away. But who knows?
'I could see him making goals for Peter Crouch here. He made lots of goals for Roque Santa Cruz at Blackburn; he's a great crosser of the ball. He could be perfect for Crouchy.
'There's no reason he can't make a big impact this year and I hope he does because when you talk to him he's a really good boy, not at all the image that comes over a lot of the time.'
Bentley's moment has arrived. Whether he wishes to be a serious professional footballer or the proverbial contender is a decision only he can take.
