In his next column, Jamie Pacheco tells us why he’s not best-pleased about the return of a long-haired, early dinner-eating Welsh golfer to north London.
So the big news in the world of football this week is that Gareth Bale is coming back to Tottenham, the whole business sold to Tottenham fans as the return of the Prodigal Son. If if it was a Prodigal Son they wanted, I think they have one already. He scored four goals at the weekend and got me 24 points, so not sure they need another one of those.
Either way, this is how I imagined the phone call between Mourinho and Bale went down:
Gareth Bale is back
“Hi, Gareth. Yeah, Jose here. No, not that one. The Special One. Yeah, so you must return to the Premier League and play for me, win with me, play a brand of attacking football that…ah, you have some question. Go ahead.
Yes, we speak English here at Tottenham. Well, Harry Winks not so much. But he’s trying.
Yes, you can have dinner early. 8.30, good? 8? Hmmm…7.30? Oh, 6. Well if that’s what you want.
No, we don’t have party animals here forcing you to have fun. Well ok… but we’re probably selling Serge Aurier anyway.
No, I can’t promise to play Ben Davies every match just because he’s Welsh. There’s this new kid. You probably don’t know him that well because he used to play for Real and you…well…you didn’t play so much. His name is Sergio Reguilon. But what I might do is try to play Davies as a left-sided centre-back. Ok?
Err, no. Harry…Kane…takes penalties. Yeah, I know but he’s the England captain.
Yeah, I think Daniel said you’d earn more than Harry. So you’ll be on…wow…that’s a lot of money. Yeah same as me but I won two Champions League titles and…oh you won four?
Where will you play? Upfront, with Son on one side and Harry in the middle. Yeah, Son got four. Harry got four assists and one goal. Yeah, 43 points between them. No. FanTeam doesn’t do bonus points. Only Impact points.
Athos? Aramis?
Sure, I suppose you could sort of be Three Musketeers if you want. Which one had the long hair, the swashbuckling (geez, that’s a big word for you, Gareth) style and…well… all of them, I guess. Ermm, maybe Aramis? Yeah, I’ll tell Daniel to put it in the contract. You can be Aramis.
No, of course I don’t expect you to come to training when your golf swing needs some work. What sort of monster do you think I am? A ‘selfish, narcissistic, moody, arrogant, stubborn as a mule, unpleasant one?’ Well, Dele Alli is entitled to his opinion but then again, he’s unlikely to be around for much longer, either. PSG, I think?
Anyway, see you on Tuesday for training. Yeah, you can keep your golf clubs in my office while you train.”
At least that’s how I imagine the conversation went down.
For the record I couldn’t really care less about what time Bale eats dinner, which musketeer he wants to be and if the guy wants to play golf all day, let him. I’m meant to be a Freelance Betting Writer but I think we all know it’s a close call as to whether I spend more time doing that or managing my FantTeam side. Actually, it’s not a close call at all. But then again, there was a lot to digest after last week’s action.
FPL Tips: Time for Timo
Either way, I’m not best-pleased about the whole thing because I have both Kane and Son in my team. As part of an 83-point week that has catapulted me onto 152 points and a rank of 1331 out of 20,448. And that despite having Mane and Bruno Fernandes as captain for the first two weeks. Both proper fails.
I can just imagine Bale coming in and upsetting the whole Kane/Son bromance going on here, so I’ll have to keep an eye on proceedings at White Hart Lane. I’m also a little concerned about Timo Werner. Sure, things are pretty hard when you’re down to ten men against Liverpool but they weren’t looking particularly great even before Christensen was sent off. Werner does admittedly have some pretty easy-looking fixtures coming up so I’ll be looking for him to have an impact in the next two or three weeks but Timo, sorry TIME…waits for no-one.
One has to be ruthless and heartless in this business. Aloof and unpleasant. Detached and unpopular. Disliked and worthy of suspicion. I’ll be asking Bale for tips on how to achieve all of that, based on his time at Real.
