Neville Williams/Getty ImagesAston Villa fans should not expect manager Paul Lambert to be looking benchward for Darren Bent anytime soon.

Villa can breathe a little easier -- for a few days at least -- after Tuesday night's hard-earned home victory against Reading, but no sooner had the final whistle blown than the questions surrounding Darren Bent's omission started up again.

- Edwards: No end to Bent mystery

In the post-match press conference at Villa Park, the focus was less on the team's third league success of a difficult campaign, achieved through Christian Benteke's 80th-minute header, and more on Bent's continued absence. The striker was again not part of the matchday squad of 18, and while Villa manager Paul Lambert must be wholeheartedly sick of facing the same question, rephrased or not, it's not a question that is going to go away anytime soon. At least not until the question has been answered properly.

As has already been reported, Lambert fielded 22 questions about Bent on Tuesday night from perplexed journalists.

"I understand your questions," sighed Lambert towards the end of the grilling. "But you get the questions every Friday. It's the same answers you'll probably get. I don't know what else you can write about it."

Plenty, it transpires. When the media sniff a story, it won't let go easily, and there is definitely a story here: Lambert's insistence that he rates Bent, his effort and attitude is fine and he isn't looking to sell him in January all sounds hollow against his explanation and justification for leaving him out of the squad. That he's the manager, he makes the decisions and those decisions are made for the good of the football club.

I like Lambert, but, frankly, the situation with Bent is an insult to the intelligence of any right-minded individual. The questions keep coming in abundance, and will keep coming, because what is playing out does not make sense, does not stack up. To keep Bent out of this Villa squad defies belief.

It has gone beyond not starting the player. That can be accepted. Villa have settled into a front three, with Benteke -- whose goal against Reading was his fifth of the season -- worthy of the centre-forward role. He has players of industry and pace, in Gabby Agbonlahor and Andreas Weimann, either side of him, and the combination works -- in fits and starts.

But Agbonlahor is still struggling with his end product and Weimann's a young striker experiencing the typical highs and lows in performance that inexperience brings -- witness his wild swing over the bar in the first half against Reading. To think that Bent is not considered capable of replacing either of these two in the second half of games is difficult to comprehend.

Consider, too, Villa's ongoing problems scoring goals, the position of the team in the Premier League table, and the depth of the first team squad. This is no expensively-assembled group of international stars, bloated in volume and quality, but a squad of relative inexperience and one trimmed down in size by injury.

Unfit and unavailable against Reading were: Richard Dunne, Ron Vlaar, Joe Bennett, Charles N'Zogbia, Chris Herd and Gary Gardner, with Stephen Warnock, Alan Hutton (both of whom have been told they are surplus to requirements) and Nathan Delfouneso all currently on loan. Daniel Johnson has just returned from a loan spell at Yeovil.

Which left, effectively, 23 players available on Tuesday. That number includes third-choice 'keeper Andy Marshall, and young trio Derrick Williams, Samir Carruthers and Graeme Burke. And still -- still! -- Bent cannot make it on to the bench.

Something is in play here. It has to be. And it must surely be more than Bent's style of play not fitting into Lambert's favoured system. Bent hasn't changed his game since Lambert took charge, and the Villa manager saw fit to not only start the season with him as his number one striker, he made him captain, too. Since he dropped out of the side, Bent has been injured, but despite being fit and training, he's kept his shirt and tie on throughout Villa's last two home league games.

Lambert might be stubborn, and he might be brave, but he isn't stupid. He must know, that with his team a whisker away from the bottom three and seemingly in genuine danger of relegation this season, the safe bet would be to include Bent in his plans. Leaving him out is a risk, fuels doubt in his judgement, raises questions among fans and creates an easy agenda for journalists to follow.

And yet leaving Bent out is what he does. It begs the question, which, to my mind, remains unanswered. Why?

It now seems unlikely Bent will be at the club come January. His agent must be minding a very unhappy player right now, and it would be incredibly naive not to think discussions, at a certain level, be it player to manager, player to agent, agent to third party, haven't already taken place.

Ultimately, Lambert can point to four points from Villa's last two games as evidence that the team are on the right track. But this stand-off with Bent, Villa's all-time record signing, no less, could dog him for some time yet and may even define his time as the club's manager.

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