Stan Collymore has criticised Tottenham Hotspur’s reported interest in re-signing Gareth Bale from Real Madrid, per The Mirror.

What’s he said?

The Express reported on Monday that Spurs are working on a deal to bring the Wales international back to north London.

Of course, they sold him to the Spanish giants in 2013, receiving a then-world record fee of £85m.

But Collymore believes that any interest in the 30-year-old would be a backward step for the Premier League club.

He wrote in his column for the newspaper: “(I) can't think of another signing Tottenham could make this month who’d epitomise what Jose Mourinho is about in 2020 than Gareth Bale.

“Because bringing the Welshman back from Real Madrid would be uninspired and backwards-looking — exactly the opposite of what Spurs actually need.

“It’d be like Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr announcing they were coming out of retirement and reuniting The Beatles.

“In that, we know how much we’d all love it to work, but we also know it will never be the same as it was the first time round.”

Old news

Spurs are instead trying to sign Steven Bergwijn from PSV Eindhoven and a deal is set to be announced before the transfer deadline, per sources.

Bergwijn is just 22, an exciting winger who has scored five Eredivisie goals and registered 10 assists this season.

Any move for Bale is pie in the sky and is so unlikely purely due to the fact that he earns a reported £650,000-per-week before tax and was briefly the best-paid player in world football.

The big fat Tottenham quiz of 2019 - how much do you remember about the last year at Spurs?

Spurs, quite simply, can’t afford him so this is rather an odd line of attack from Collymore.

He has picked out a potential deal, that won’t happen, and has then had a dig at Mourinho, who hasn’t even picked out Bale as a target.

It’s bizarre all round; Spurs fans would do well to ignore him.

Meanwhile, Spurs are confident of securing the signing of this striker before the transfer deadline!