Andre Villas-Boas denies deal done for Bale

22 August 2013 09:31

Andre Villas-Boas has denied that a deal has been agreed for the sale of Gareth Bale to Real Madrid.

Recent reports suggest Bale could be closing in on a world-record transfer to the nine-time European champions, but Villas-Boas denied that was the case.

"That is not true," the Tottenham manager said on Wednesday night in Tbilisi.

The north London club would not comment, however, on claims that technical director Franco Baldini was in the Spanish capital for talks over Bale's future.

Bale will sit out the first leg of Tottenham's Europa League play-off against Dinamo Tbilisi this evening, officially because of a foot injury.

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 Erik Lamela.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to the reasoning behind the uncharacteristic record splurge by chairman Daniel Levy.

One is that he wants to bring the stellar signings in to persuade Bale to stay and the other, more popular, one is that the chairman is already spending the cash the world-record fee that the Londoners would receive if the Welshman left for the Bernabeu.

Villas-Boas was asked which one was the case last night and he 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.

Source: PA