Jose Mourinho hails Gareth Bale impact but plays down Tottenham title chances after Brighton win

Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty I
Dan Kilpatrick @Dan_KP2 November 2020

Jose Mourinho is confident that Gareth Bale will keep improving as he continues to carefully manage the Welshman’s playing time following a knee injury.

Bale came off the bench to score the first goal of his second Tottenham spell on Sunday, nodding home Sergio Reguilon's cross on 73 minutes, moments after coming off the bench.

"I told already for about a week or so, he's improving," Mourinho said. "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. He will start again on Thursday and even in a Europa League match when the intensity is different to the Premier League, [we] 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 [Kane] in a very experienced way to play the last 15minutes 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.

"I'm very pleased for him, especially for him because he deserves that. When I have five minutes I'm going to Safari to look at Madrid websites to see what they say."

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Spurs moved second in the table and will go top if they beat West Brom at The Hawthorns next Saturday in the early kick-off. 

But Mourinho played down talk his side could challenge for the title. 

Pool via REUTERS

"We are ready to challenge West Bromwich Albion in the next match," he said. "It's going to be very difficult. 

"They need points - Slaven [Bilic, West Brom manager] clever guy, lots of experienced players. It's going to be very difficult. We are going to be ready to challenge them. Your question, I understand. 

"I think we just have to go match after match. We need to learn with our mistakes and understand the PL is going in one direction where every match is very difficult.

"People's tendency will always be when one of the top teams loses points, the tendency will always be they didn't play well.

"But I believe that [Brighton boss Graham] Potter and all the guys that coach teams from the second part of the table deserve a lot of credit.

"Because they work phenomenal, they have very good teams, very good players. So I don't know what will happen in the Premier League honestly."

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