Adrian Durham has hurled a stinger at both Jose Mourinho and Gareth Bale, taking aim at the former for having elected to play central midfielder Moussa Sissoko ahead of the Welshman at right wing in Wednesday’s 1-1 draw against Fulham, adding insult to injury by saying that Bale’s role in the team has been reduced to nothing more than a ‘cheerleader on the bench’ during his second spell with Tottenham.
The Welshman had fortuitously sealed an emotional return to north London when offered on loan from the Zidane’s Los Blancos last September, having been frozen out by the French head coach in the Spanish capital.
Bale, unfortunately, has been relegated to a substitute role since returning to Spurs, having started just one Premier League match so far. And Durham wasted no time in lambasting Mourinho for his decision to play Sissoko out of position, while questioning Bale’s role at Spurs.
The talkSPORT host said: “[Jose] has turned them Spursy again, there’s no doubt about that.
“It was a shocker from him… The Sissoko thing, I just don’t get.
“What does it say about Bale? Right now, he’s a cheerleader on the bench.
“I don’t mean to be disrespectful – that’s exactly the job he’s doing.
“He’s making people laugh on the bench. They need him out on the field being good if he’s capable of it.
“But all we’re seeing now is the reason why Real Madrid didn’t play him as much as people wanted him to be played.”
In another almost similar reference earlier this week, former Chelsea defender Jason Cundy had noted that Bale’s return to Tottenham looked ‘strange’.
He said: “It’s looking like an increasingly strange signing, isn’t it?
“I know the Spurs fans were excited about it and I was too, I was looking forward to seeing what Gareth Bale was going to turn up and what we were going to see from him.
“But we’ve not seen anything, have we? We haven’t seen anything of him.
“So far, you’d have to say it’s been a bad signing.”