Alasdair Gold has dropped an update on Tottenham Hotspur's reported summer transfer target Gareth Bale.

What's the talk?

According to a recent report by Italian media outlet TuttoMercatoWeb, the Real Madrid forward has already put pen to paper on a pre-contract agreement with Spurs ahead of a move back to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium at the end of the current campaign.

However, in a recent Q&A on football.london, the Spurs correspondent appeared to pour cold water on the 32-year-old's potential summer return to north London, suggesting that the Wales international would not fit into the way Antonio Conte wants his side to play.

Regarding Bale's links with a move back to Tottenham, the journalist said:

"There are different ways to look at this. Various people within Spurs have shut down those Bale stories from Spain pretty quickly, saying there's absolutely no truth in it.

"The flip side is, if I'm thinking from a cynical marketing perspective, Tottenham would surely consider bringing him back for one last hurrah of a season in front of a Tottenham Hotspur Stadium packed with crowds.

"However, from a football perspective, it makes little sense as trying to shoehorn the Welshman, who will be 33 then, into Conte's demanding, high energy system.

"I just wonder whether it would be similar to the [Jose] Mourinho and Bale experiment and the winger's even higher wages than last season as a free agent would be problematic if he's not a regular starter either through Conte's wishes or injuries.

"Bale would certainly bring the experience and winning mentality Conte needs in this Spurs team but I'm not sure how well he would suit a system with wing-backs.

"He would have to play further inside and there would be a pressure on him to get back and defend, which was a difficultly under Mourinho."

Disaster for Conte

While it is undeniable that Bale returning to Spurs for the twilight years of his career would be an extremely romantic story, Gold is correct in his claim that the forward is far from the type of player that Conte requires in order to fully implement his particular brand of football.

Indeed, when comparing the £528k-per-week Welshman's statistics from his 2020/21 campaign on loan at Spurs to that of Dejan Kulusevski, Lucas Moura and Son Heung-min so far this season, it is clear that Bale falls some way short in the metrics required to feature in Conte's high-energy system.

For example, this term, Kulusevski has so far pressured an opponent a total of 249 times, Moura 229 times and Son 220 times, while Bale only pressured his opposition 125 times over his 20 Premier League appearances for Tottenham last time out.

Furthermore, regarding actually winning the ball back, Bale's nine interceptions made in 2020/21 also falls some way short of Kulusevski's 18, Moura's 17 and Son's 16 so far in the current campaign.

As such, while the £4.5m-rated forward's overall returns of 16 goals and three assists over 34 appearances for Spurs last season were indeed impressive, when taking into account the type of player Conte requires in order for his brand of football to be successful, it would very much appear as if the signing of Bale - particularly on astronomical wages - would be something of a disaster for the 52-year-old Italian.

In other news: £65.5m down the drain: "Phenomenal" Spurs flop has rinsed Daniel Levy for 105 weeks