Here are your Tottenham Hotspur headlines for the evening of Wednesday October 14.
The role Gareth Bale will play in Spurs swoop for Wales international
Tottenham Hotspur are interested in adding centre back Joe Rodon to their squad and Gareth Bale could play a pivotal role in luring the Wales international to North London.
Spurs have until Friday’s Championship transfer deadline to conclude a deal for the Swansea City defender who has been on their radar all their summer, with the Swans setting an asking price of £22 million.
As things stand, Tottenham are unwilling to meet that asking price, but journalist Duncan Castles claims Bale has provided a ringing endorsement of Rodon having played alongside him for Wales.
Daniel Levy and Jose Mourinho will need more than just Bale’s opinion to base a transfer market judgement on, but the Welsh winger’s presence at Spurs could be a factor in any move.
Tottenham Hotspur made deadline day approach to sign Ligue 1 forward
Carlos Vinicius arrived late in the summer transfer window to satisfy Jose Mourinho’s demands that he be signed a new striker, but Tottenham Hotspur also made a deadline day move for another forward.
According to Foot Mercato , the North London club “tried their luck in the home stretch on October 5” to sign Moussa Dembele from Lyon with a late approach made for the 24-year-old.
It’s claimed Paris Saint-Germain were also interested in Dembele, but that Lyon “closed the door” on the potential exit of their star striker so late in the transfer window.
Dembele scored 16 times in 27 Ligue 1 appearances for Lyon last season, also scoring twice in the French club’s shock win over Manchester City in the quarter finals of the Champions League.
Former Spurs boss on how tactical tweak brought the best out of Gareth Bale
Former Tottenham Hotspur boss Andre Villas-Boas has spoken about how a subtle tactical tweak brought the best out of Gareth Bale, setting the Welshman on track to become a superstar.
Bale worked under Villas-Boas during the 2013/13 season and the Portuguese has revealed how a shift to a more attacking role prompted the form that earned the winger a world record transfer to Real Madrid the following summer.
“Gareth wasn't feeling that he was unlocking his full potential, he came into my office one day and said: 'Boss, I'm not happy, things are not going well for me,’” Villas-Boas, now in charge of Marseille, told 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, and his career exploded from that moment on.”
