Former Tottenham Hotspur manager Andre Villas-Boas has revealed the chat he had with Gareth Bale which helped transform the player's career.
The pair had a season together at Spurs in 2012/13 - the campaign in which Bale really caught the eye and ending up by moving to Real Madrid.
The Welshman scored 31 goals in 52 appearances that year which prompted the Spanish club to fork out a then world record fee of £85m for his services.
Villas-Boas, Spurs' manager at the time, has admitted a conversation with the player midway through the season led to him changing the side's formation to try and get the best out of Bale.
And it certainly worked with Bale going on to have one of the best campaigns of his career.
"Gareth wasn't feeling that he was unlocking his full potential [so] he came into my office one day and said: 'Boss, I'm not happy, things are not going well for me," said Villas-Boas in an interview with Copa90.
'Ok,' I said, 'I can try and change to a 4-4-2 formation and you can play free at the top with [Emmanuel] Adebayor and I can move [Gylfi] Sigurdsson to the left, cutting in.
'This is when Gareth starts on that run of games where he scored, I think for five or six games in a row, and then the results exploded.
"His career exploded from that moment on."
From the end of January of that season (2013), Bale went on to score six goals in four matches which included braces against Newcastle United in the Premier League and Lyon in the Europa League.
He ultimately helped Spurs to a fifth place finish in the Premier League table with 72 points from 38 games.
Bale, who is now back at Tottenham on a season-long loan deal from Madrid, could make his debut on Sunday at home to West Ham United.
