Aston Villa: We are fully behind Gerard Houllier - Darren Bent

RECORD signing Darren Bent insists Villa’s under-performing players are fully behind manager Gerard Houllier, despite talk of unrest.Many fans believe Houllier has lost the dressing room after a series of ill-fated incidents that have made Villa’s relegation-threatened season even harder to come to terms with.The latest episode to rock the club came last week when Richard Dunne and James Collins were involved in a bust-up at a team-bonding break.However, £18 million acquisition Bent believes that the talk on the terraces is wrong as the players are battling to keep Houllier in a job as much as they are trying to stay in the division.“We all believe in the manager and we are still fighting for him and I’m hopeful we’ll get out of it very soon,” he said.
“We need to stick together – the players and the staff – and we will fight for one another now and try and get out of it.“We know what we need to do because, of course, we are in relegation trouble.“We let ourselves down against Wolves and we know it is a big blow and that we are really in a fight now.“But we are still fighting and working as hard as we possibly can and I’m sure we will get out of it.”Dunne and Collins’ boozed-up behaviour on the morale-boosting trip landed the pair with hefty fines toppling over £100,000 each.However, it’s not the first incident to involve key first-team players this season.Big-money buy, Stephen Ireland, was frozen out at Villa Park and shipped out on loan to Newcastle, as was fans’ favourite John Carew, who joined Stoke in the January transfer window.