Friday 23 August 2013 13:57, UK
The Gareth Bale transfer saga could soon be drawing to a close with the Tottenham forward's proposed move to Real Madrid imminent.
Bale will play no part in the first leg of Tottenham's Europa League play-off against Dinamo Tbilisi on Thursday because of a foot injury. Speaking on Wednesday ahead of the game in Georgia, Villas-Boas dismissed reports that Bale was closing in on a move to Real. "That is not true," said the Tottenham manager. While Bale has been recovering, Tottenham have spent £60million on four new signings and they could shell out that same figure over the next two days to land Willian and Lamela. There are two schools of thought when it comes to the reasoning behind the record splurge by Daniel Levy. One is that he wants to bring the stellar signings in to persuade Bale to stay and the other is that the chairman is already spending the world-record fee the Londoners would receive if the Welshman left for the Bernabeu. Villas-Boas was asked which one was the case and was reluctant to say that the new signings had been bought in order to try to tempt Bale to stay. "Ideally we want to keep everyone to make us stronger - that is the ultimate objective of the club," the Spurs manager said. "In the end, anything can happen. We are dragging ourselves into the last weeks of transfer activity and it can become very, very frantic." Spurs expect to complete the signing of Willian after the Brazilian passed his medical while there is excitement among supporters about the prospect of Argentinian midfielder Lamela and Real Madrid left-back Fabio Coentrao also joining the club.
