England under-21 manager Stuart Pearce takes a depleted squad to the European under-21 tournament in Holland because at the 11th hour Blackburn Rovers winger David Bentley pulled out of the squad. Bentley cited fatigue as his reason for not wanting to participate in the tournament.

Bentley was an unused member of the senior squad that drew with Brazil and beat Estonia. Bentley claims that he is acting on the advice of members of the senior squad. These players who are much older and much more likely to succumb to fatigue than Bentley, most of whom have had long European campaigns; and probably have a much more hectic behind the scenes schedule. David Beckham would be one such example of a player who would travel to the ends of the Earth and drop everything to play for England.

It could be seen as a club versus country row, Bentley putting his club ahead of his country. However the player believes that he is putting his country first! He believes that not playing this summer will make him fresh next summer when England need him most. That is a massive assumption on the wingers behalf, as it seems that he thinks he will be in the side ahead of a reborn David Beckham, Aaron Lennon or Shaun Wright-Phillips. It could be argued that England need him more now, to help them win the European Championships, if successful he would have done something good for his club as his transfer value would probably go up. Some England fans could use Blackburn manager Mark Hughes’ Welsh nationality as the cause for Bentley’s withdrawal from the squad.

Fatigue has to be the poorest excuse for a lad of Bentley’s age to pull out of the squad. Its not like he is a junior doctor working around the clock to keep patients alive, or a single parent working two jobs just to put food on the table. Bentley has played 51 games of football in nine months for Blackburn and has only recently been brought into the under-21 squad. That’s just 1.3 games per week and that does not include any occasions that Bentley may not have finished a game which happened at least once when he was sent off.

Bentley told a radio station that he had “three decisions; the club could have pulled me out, I could have pulled myself out or I could have faked an injury”. The only decision he had to make was to play for his country or not. He continued saying that he has never played “a 60 game season to go straight in to another one”. In reality he played 57 games this season 15 less than Frank Lampard, Bentley has a creative imagination if he thinks he will play 60 games next season, considering Rovers are not in Europe next season and they have been inactive in the transfer window.