Harry Redknapp is adamant that his decision to sell Darren Bent to Sunderland last summer will “never haunt” him, in spite of the striker’s fine start to his career on Wearside.

Bent returns to White Hart Lane today for the first time since his acrimonious £10 million move to the Stadium of Light last summer as the leading English goalscorer in the Barclays Premier League.

Relations between the clubs deteriorated badly during the course of their negotiations over Bent, who expressed his dissatisfaction at the slow rate of progress with a pithy message on his Twitter page aimed at Daniel Levy, the Spurs chairman.

Before that, Redknapp had offended Bent after a 1-1 draw between Spurs and Portsmouth in January, when the manager insisted that his wife, Sandra, could have scored from a chance that the 25-year-old did not convert.

“He’s playing regularly for Sunderland and is becoming a big player in their team,” Redknapp said yesterday, with attacking riches to choose from in Robbie Keane, Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch and Roman Pavlyuchenko. “He is now somewhere where he is able to play regularly and score goals and he’s shown what he can do. He’s a good player.

“It will never haunt me, whatever he does at Sunderland. It’s a game of opinion. People move on and prove other people wrong. Who knows, he may not have scored any goals here at Tottenham. What he has to do is let his football do the talking. He has to keep scoring goals all year and get in the World Cup squad.”

Bent, who has mustered eight goals in 11 league games for Sunderland and scored against Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool, has again expressed his sorrow over the Twitter episode — for which Tottenham fined him two weeks’ wages — but he is thrilled with his club-record transfer to the North East, the fee for which could rise to £16 million.

“It has been fantastic moving to Sunderland,” he said. “Being at Spurs, I was on a downer. People were criticising me left, right and centre, questioning me, which in my eyes was ridiculous. I still scored 17 goals last season and was their top goalscorer and people were still criticising me and speculating about my role.

“It was completely different at Sunderland. When I came to Sunderland, I had thousands of people on my Twitter page saying, ‘We want you here.’ I just wanted to get up here and play for these people.

“I think it is the faith [Sunderland] have shown in me that makes me want to go the extra mile for them. It is about being given a chance. I have come here after a hard two years and the fans have welcomed me like nothing has happened.

“Because they have got behind me, I have managed to get goals and work hard for them. It is not about having an arm round the shoulder, it is about being given a chance in the first place.

“It is not about Darren Bent versus Spurs, it is so much more than that — how well we have started the season, about us kicking on now and moving to the next level and getting to Europe and going to Spurs and getting a result. It will be a strange occasion going back and the ovation won’t be nice but I will get on with it.

“I regret the Twitter thing. It was not my nature and I probably shouldn’t have done it. But what’s done is done.”