Bale earning his Spurs

IF Tottenham Hotspur achieve their aim of qualifying for the Champions League, it will have as much to do with players who have come in from the cold as their established stars.

Saturday’s defeat of a stubborn Blackburn Rovers side owed much to the goalscoring prowess of Roman Pavlyuchenko, who could not get a game for most of the season, and Gareth Bale, who was so jinxed that Alex Ferguson urged Harry Redknapp not to pick him.

Redknapp knew all about Bale when he took over at Spurs 18 months ago, for two reasons. Firstly he had been his manager at Southampton when the teenage Bale provided speed on the opposite flank to a young Theo Walcott. Then, when Redknapp arrived at Spurs almost 18 months ago, he inherited a player who had been signed by former manager Martin Jol with the pressure of being a £10m teenager, who had been hit by injuries and had the unfortunate run of not having started a league game that Spurs had won.