Gareth Fale

Hope you saw Gareth Bale being paraded in front of a reasonably-filled Bernabeu stadium this afternoon. Here he is, in the picture on the left, sitting all tight and erect whilst the Real Madrid president, Perez effuses about him.

 Personally I thought it was a little rude to be listening to a compilation of Aled Jones, Cerys Matthews, Charlotte Church and Tom Jones ballads on your headphones when someone is eulogising about you, but maybe that’s just me.

With 20 to 30 thousand (seemingly jobless) people turning-out to see the little Welsh monkey strut his stuff, it doubtless wouldn’t have taken much to please this lazy afternoon throng. Bale’s advisors had made him memorise a couple of meaningless platitudes in Spanish, which they seemed pleased enough with – but then came the big moment. Bale changed into his Real Madrid strip and trotted out onto the pitch, ready for the infamous keepy-uppy segment. 

Surely this is what everyone had really been waiting for. Just how good would an 85 million pound player really be? Perhaps this man could make the ball levitate just with the power of his mind? Maybe he could pull-off some magical tricks that no one had ever seen before. Maybe he would make the crowd all whoop and holler with excitement at his skill and deftness of touch?

Erm, no. Eight-five million pounds? You’ve got to be having a laugh! Three times he tried to keep the ball up and three times he failed miserably. I think he had the ball off the ground for no more than ten seconds – at which point he gave-up, bent-down and held the ball for the assembled photo journalists. My eleven year old daughter can do better than that and she’s on pocket money of eighty-five pennies a day. Oh dear, or dear. I’m sure he wanted the ground to open up at that point because it was horribly embarrassing. What an epic fail.

I personally think Spurs have done an excellent bit of business here today. Disregarding my undeserved ribbing of our unassuming little sheep-shagger, Bale is undoubtedly a fantastic player, and he pulled matches out of the bag on several occasions for us last season. I have no complaint with him at all. He has pace in abundance and a cracking left foot. He looked like a wanker when he kissed the Real Madrid badge, which I thought was naff beyond words, but all-in-all, I wish him good luck.

But he’s only one player and we’ve used his money to buy half a new team. This should provide more depth to our squad and help us through any injuries in mid-season. Like any purchases, some will succeed and some will fail, but at the very least we have shortened that testing process.

I would personally have liked to see one more striker come in as I’m not totally convinced by Soldado so far, and Lamela will surely take time to find his feet, but it’s decent business all the same. Spurs looked a bit leaden on Sunday but it is early days and I’m sure we will do okay.

Right, I'm off now to practice my keepy-uppy. Well, you never know do you? It could be my road to a fortune.