Soldado, Lloris, AVB, Bale, Redknapp

Roberto Soldado marked his territory yesterday scoring on his debut from the penalty spot in the 1-1 draw with Espanyol at White Hart Lane. Who exactly was going to take our penalties is the last 2 years has been a bit of a mystery, Defoe is awful at them, Ade could take one and Bale knows how to kick a ball, but they are Soldado's department now. The cool way in which he took it shows they are in good hands.

According to French sports daily L'Equipe, Monaco are considering a move for Hugo Lloris having been turned down in their approaches for Marseille's Steve Madanda, Saint-Etienne's Stephane Ruffier and Barcelona's Victor Valdes.

Gareth Bale will apparently link up with Wales next week but as to his Spurs future Andre Villas-Boas wouldn't discuss it. It was known a long time before that he would take no part in yet another Spurs game with the season only a week away and AVB indicated he wouldn't play against Crystal Palace either.

Villas-Boas said: "The only thing I can say about the stories is I am not going to comment because everybody has speculated a lot. There are some different stories, some which are not true, with people inventing without knowledge of what is going on.

"The only thing I can tell you is the player is under the treatment of the medical department for this pain in the foot which is disturbing him.

"He has been called up for his national team [for a friendly match against the Republic of Ireland], our medical department is going to be in contact with the Wales medical department to make sure they have everything available in terms of giving information on how the player has been doing in these last weeks.

"Regarding the speculation, I don't want to extend myself further than I have told you.

"The only thing we can do is make information available to the Welsh FA. If he gets to a fixture available to play it is because he hasn't felt pain. He is training on his own so there is a possibility he makes a recovery.

He was asked if Bale would be playing against Crystal Palace and AVB answered he wouldn't be fit.

"If we manage to recover the player, but obviously he is far far off fitness regarding what the others have done. It is three weeks since he played for Tottenham so I wouldn't expect him to play for us."

Jamie Redknapp has his say again, he is keen for Bale to go to Madrid as he is looking at it from a players viewpoint.

He claims Tottenham are resigned to losing Gareth Bale to Real Madrid because he has 'outgrown' the club.

"I feel sorry for the real Madrid people dealing with Daniel and I mean that in the nicest possible way" says former Spurs midfielder Redknapp. Every pound is a prisoner with Daniel.  He will make it so difficult for them.

"What Spurs are trying to do is get their work done, then go and sell Bale.  But it won’t happen until the end of the window.  Daniel knows full well that if he sells Bale first, then rings up about a player, clubs will ask far more. It’s a poker game and Daniel is the best player in town.

"I still believe it will happen because he wants to go. I’ve spoken to some of the players at Tottenham and they have said he’s outgrown the club now. I read Gareth Bale wrong because he’s a quiet lad and I wasn’t sure he wanted to go at this point.

"But fair enough, he seems to know he’s ready and it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Until Tottenham change their wage structure it’s always going to be the stumbling block to keep their best players.

"Last year they were too reliant on Bale and maybe now it will be more of a team effort. They’ve signed a lot of excellent players. I don’t think Daniel would have been too happy to have signed Soldado for that kind of money (£26m) age his age (28) but it’s very hard to sign a quality centre forward these days. They are assembling a very strong squad in almost every position.

He finishes mentioning the risk to Spurs keeping Bale until the end of the window but as it is clear Bale won't be playing before the window shuts it hardly applies this time. "You could see the disruption before Spurs sold Luka Modric. They had a bad start and got trounced by Man City and Man Utd. Modric was sulking and didn’t want to play."

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