Jose Mourinho has joked that he will look at ‘Madrid websites’ to see what they make of Gareth Bale’s performance against Brighton after the Welshman scored the winner in Tottenham’s 2-1 win over the Seagulls on Sunday.
Bale has not had the smoothest of starts to his second spell at Spurs, with the winger having received some criticism for his performance against Royal Antwerp on Thursday in what was just his second start.
However, Mourinho stuck by Bale after the game and insisted that it is only a matter of time before the 31-year-old gets his sharpness back.
The Real Madrid loanee came on in the 70th minute in place of Erik Lamela and made an instant impact as he met Sergio Reguilon’s cross with a forceful header to give the Lilywhites all three points.
The Spurs boss admitted that he was delighted to see Bale being rewarded for the hard work he has been putting in on the training field.
He told Football.London: “I told already for about a week or so, I’m saying he’s improving. It’s not just by watching him, the data supports our training process. We knew. The good thing is Gareth also knows. We share ideas and share feelings.
“He doesn’t have 90 minutes of a Premier League match in his legs yet so we’re using the Europa League to complement his training process. We are using some matches in the Premier League when we decide to play him and the normal tendency for him will be of course to be better and better and better. That’s it.
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“He will start again on Thursday and even in a Europa League match when the intensity is different to the Premier League I will not play him for 90 minutes. I always will have this care with him until we feel that he’s ready.
“Today great impact, very important goal for us and after that he joined Harry in a very experienced way to play the last 15 minutes of the game, both very clever, very intelligent, both very good, holding the ball, bringing the ball to zones where they couldn’t hurt us.
“So I’m very pleased for him, but very pleased especially for him because he deserves that. When I have 5 minutes I’m going to Safari to look at Madrid websites to see what they say.
“He knows we care about him and we know he cares about us, the team and the club, Spurs. He’s the perfect fit, he’s very calm, very intelligent, he has good feelings. He had bad feelings before, because the training process was hard, and his body was suffering a little bit, but we gave him what he needs as a whole.
“I am speaking about sports science, medical, my assistants, the other players. I’m very pleased for him to score this winning goal.”
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