Just picture it: Darren Bent sat at home on a bank holiday weekend replaying his ‘mouth’ gesture towards the Spurs fans after his first goal, over and over again while smiling to himself. What he didn’t realise at the time was that football has a way of coming back to bite you on the back side. A goal may have made his day, two probably made his weekend but a hat-trick will surely have made his season. Funnily enough, it never came despite two chances from 12 yards out.

Should Spurs manage to recover their fourth spot and hold on until the end of the season, it will surely be they who have the last laugh in this case. Despite his good form, Bent is a rank outsider to go to the World Cup and, in my eyes, rightly so. While he has scored a number of goals, he is not a World Cup footballer. I’d imagine Fabio Capello to be a person who enjoys the finer things in life. A renowned perfectionist and a man who has a huge interest in history and culture. As with most Italians, Capello has an interest in art and reportedly owns a collection worth up to £10million. It is no surprise then that he is unlikely to choose Darren Bent. Having managed teams such as Roma and Juventus, he has coached strikers including Francesco Totti and Alessandro Del Piero. The type of players who make football look like an art form. So while Totti and Del Piero were Michelangelo, Bent must be Picasso. Popular, but not pretty.

The calls for him to be included in the World Cup squad have once again surfaced. Anybody who watched his performance against Brazil will have noticed that he might be a little out of his depth at that level. If England are to win the World Cup this summer, it is the likes of Brazil that they should be comparing themselves to. Bent is thriving of being the in form man at a mid table side. His time at Tottenham would suggest not that he wasn’t given the chance, but that the people managing the team simply did not think he was good enough. After all, while we get to watch footballers once a week, manager’s get to see them every day. If luck is on your side then, no matter how poor you may be in training, you could pop up with a crucial goal and look like a life saver on a Saturday afternoon. I don’t take away the fact that he has scored just four goals less than Wayne Rooney in the Premier League this season, but it would take more than that for me to select him.

The next few weeks will be very interesting indeed. The question is, who will have the last laugh? Darren Bent or the Tottenham fans?