Arsenal handed Blackburn Rovers classy operator that created £15m windfall: View | OneFootball

Following an underwhelming 2004/05 season, Blackburn Rovers found themselves under some pressure going into the summer of 2005.

The Ewood Park club had finished 15th in the final top-flight standings in 04/05, having spent much of that campaign looking nervously over their shoulder at the bottom three.

Keen to avoid a repeat of that, the club looked to strengthen in the subsequent summer transfer window, ahead of the start of the 2005/06 season.

One of those whose addition over the course of that particular window certainly helped to turn the tide for Blackburn over the course of the following campaign was David Bentley.

David Bentley excelled at Blackburn

Late in the 2005 summer window, Bentley made the move to Ewood Park on a season-long loan from Arsenal.

Having made just a handful of senior appearances for the Gunners, the midfielder had spent the previous campaign on loan with Norwich City, as the Canaries were relegated from the Premier League.

Initially, it was something of a quiet start to life at Ewood Park for the former Arsenal man, but Blackburn nevertheless moved to make his loan deal permanent in the 2006 January window.

Almost immediately after that, Bentley began to justify Rovers making such a signing. Just a day after his move had become permanent, the midfielder netted a hat-trick in a memorable 4-3 win over Manchester United at Ewood Park – his first Premier League goals for Blackburn.

That would help the Lancashire club qualify for Europe that season, a far cry from the relegation fight of the season before, and the midfielder would go from strength to strength with the club.

The following campaign saw him become a more regular goalscorer for the club, with some stunning long-range efforts.

Also becoming something of a creator in chief, Bentley ended a 2006-07 campaign in which Blackburn finished tenth in the Premier League, reached the semi finals of the FA Cup and Round of 32 of the UEFA Cup, by being named as the club's Player of the Season.

He would then follow that up with another impressive campaign in 2007-08, again scoring some excellent goals from midfield to help Rovers to seventh place in the final Premier League standings.

His form did not go unnoticed either, with Bentley also earning seven senior international caps for England - the only ones of his career - while on the books with Blackburn between 2007 and 2008.

Then in the summer of 2008, the midfielder would move on from Ewood Park, in a deal that certainly paid off for Blackburn.

Rovers got the best of David Bentley

The midfielder's departure saw him move to Tottenham, in a deal that saw Blackburn receive a sizeable fee of £15million.

Even with some of that being due to his former club, Spurs' North London rivals Arsenal, that still represented a decent return for the Ewood Park club, especially with what he had done for them on the pitch.

Beyond that, things never worked out for Bentley at White Hart Lane either. Despite something of a bright start, the midfielder soon slipped down the pecking order and struggled to establish himself in the first-team at Tottenham, and fast became something of a forgotten man.

That led to the midfielder heading out on several loan moves elsewhere, although even then, he was unable to rediscover the top form he had produced previously at Blackburn.

Indeed, not even a return to Ewood Park in January 2013, could bring out the best in Bentley, who looked a shadow of his former self, making just seven appearances in total, and failing to score for Rovers, who by that point had dropped into the Championship.

At the end of the 2012/13 campaign, Bentley was released by Tottenham following the expiration of his contract, meaning they missed out on any return on their investment in him.

Then, in 2014, after a year out of the game and at the age of just 29, Bentley announced that he had retired from football after falling out of love with the sport.

It was a remarkable and sad turnaround for a player who had promised so much during his days at Blackburn Rovers, one club who will have been left in no doubt about just how good the midfielder could have been, and indeed was for a time at Ewood Park.