Nicklas Bendtner: Former Arsenal forward on gambling, Thierry Henry and having no regrets

Nicklas BendtnerGetty Images

Bendtner scored the winner in the North London derby in 2007 aged 19

When he signed for Arsenal as a teenager he was one of the hottest prospects in Europe.

Playing in the first team with club greats such as Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Cesc Fabregas, Nicklas Bendtner knew he was good enough to be star too.

But his career didn't work out like that.

Speaking to BBC Sport's Steve Crossman, Bendtner opens up on gambling, a training ground confrontation with Henry when he was just 16, his 'Lord Bendtner' nickname, the car crash that ruined his fitness, his conviction for assaulting a taxi driver, feeling lucky and having "no regrets".

Bendtner is now 32, back in his native Denmark and has written a book, Both Sides, about his life in football so far.

He played for Arsenal between 2005 and 2014, scoring 45 goals in 171 games, and had spells at Sunderland, Birmingham City, Juventus, Nottingham Forest and Rosenborg.

Gambling - 'I needed a wake up call'

Suffering from recurring injuries, Bendtner looked to recreate the buzz he got from playing football in the casinos. One night in 2011, aged 23, he knew it had gone too far was when he was £400,000 down playing roulette.

"At times it could seem like an addiction", he said. "I always felt I had it under control but that night was the sort of turning point for me. I knew this isn't the lifestyle I want.

"When I had a lot of injuries on the pitch, I couldn't find that excitement level of going on, playing in front of 60,000. There wasn't anything that lived up to that. The only time I could get that competitive feeling was going to the casino.

"The higher the stakes, the higher the adrenaline rush.

"I was £400,000 down but ended up winning quite a lot of it back and only ended up losing £20,000 on the night.

"It felt terrible but after I won it back I had a really hard think at the hotel when I got home and just knew that was the end of my big gambling nights.

"I didn't want to be just another guy who played football and lost all his money and didn't use his brain.

"It was important for me to go back to my roots and re-gather. Looking back now I'm happy that it happened as I may not have got that wake-up call."

He said someone who had helped him was his former manager at Birmingham City Steve Bruce.

"Steve and I had a really honest relationship," he said. "He helped me a lot over the years and would also pick up the phone just to see what was going on.

"He would say 'listen, this is not the path you want to go down [gambling]. Be clever with your money, be smart with your life'. He definitely was a big factor in my early days and also further on in my career."

Confrontation with Arsenal legend Henry

"Looking back now I can see I was out of order"

Bendtner joined Arsenal as a 16-year-old and was quickly elevated to training with the first-team squad full of stars including one of the biggest names in world football at the time, France World Cup winner Thierry Henry.

But the two had a confrontation after the teenager called out Henry for taking three touches in a game of two-touch in training.

Writing in his book Bendtner says: "Henry tells me to shut up, this time with a lot of swear words included. And in hindsight it is good advice. But I am not taking it on. I shout back. He confronts me, yells into my face, says all kinds of things.

"But that is not the end of it. After training Henry comes after me."

This led to a two-hour heart-to-heart with the Frenchman about Bendtner's attitude and his career path.

"Thierry was probably the biggest star in the league at that time and his record speaks for itself," he says. "Looking back now I can see that I was out of order. My head was different back then. We had this little dispute where he puts me right in my place.

"After, he put his arm around me and said 'listen I need to explain a few things about how this works'. That gave me a lot of respect for the guy. I thought that was really big. For three months I didn't train with them [the first team] and that was my lesson. It showed me and I knew to shut it. It helped me a lot. I was 16 at this point.

"Looking back now I think you should just keep your head down and do what your elders tell you. I think that's one of the things that still should remain in football but I was just very competitive and I was just in that zone. You didn't obviously know how it all worked. It was all new so you had to learn. That was a big learning curve for me."

His car crash - 'a massive setback'

In 2009, at the age of 21 he was involved in a serious car accident on the way to Arsenal training. He crashed his Aston Martin on the A1 near South Mimms and said the incident was so serious he was "lucky to be alive".

"The car accident was a massive setback for me," he said. "It was very serious. It's caused me a lot of pain and still does to this day. It changed me. I got a different kind of approach.

"I felt quite lucky to still be alive because it was quite a serious accident. But it just caused me a lot of small injuries and problems in the coming years and that was quite difficult to deal with as a player and as a person because you couldn't quite get where you wanted all the time because I always got stopped because of an injury or from pain."

Being nicknamed 'Lord Bendtner'

After dating a baroness, fans began calling him 'Lord Bendtner', something he initially hated but has now embraced.

"At the beginning I thought it was alright then I didn't like it and now it is part of me," he said. "It came from my ex-girlfriend and now it has stuck and it's become a meme - I was the original Lord.

"There was time when I needed it to stop but realised that wouldn't happen so if you can't beat them, join them."

Getty Images

Bendtner outside court in Copenhagen in 2018 after he was convicted of assaulting a taxi driver

Arrest and conviction for assaulting a taxi driver

Bendtner was sentenced to 50 days in jail in 2018 in Denmark for assaulting a taxi driver while playing for Rosenborg. He served the sentence under house arrest. He admitted hitting the taxi driver but said it was because he felt threatened.

"It gave me a lot of time to think and I decided I would write the book," he said. "I wanted to tell my story and for people to understand my life and what its's like to be young, grow into an adult and be a man.

"It was a boring 50 days [house arrest] - I did my training, wrote the book and was left with my thoughts. It was a difficult period. The fact you could only stay in your house gave me time to reflect on many things and write them down."

Feeling lucky and 'no regrets'

"There's certain things that I would have liked to have driven even bigger but on the other hand I'm proud of what I have done.

"My experiences have been exceptional. You always look back when you are older and think 'if I could have been something different'...

"I feel like I have been misunderstood, in certain aspects. It's difficult when you sit from the outside and don't know a person. You have the ability to write it how you want.

"I consider myself lucky to have experienced the stuff I have. The experiences on and off the pitch is something I could never get again. It's been an exciting road so far, that fact you have played in front of 90,000 fans and scored goals and had that adrenaline rush no-one else can reach.

"Whatever I do for the rest of my life I have to find many different things [rather] than that one thing that gave me that rush. But I don't have regrets."