Jose Mourinho

Tottenham Hotspur: Supporters angry that Jose Mourinho brought off Gareth Bale during win

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Image for Tottenham Hotspur: Supporters angry that Jose Mourinho brought off Gareth Bale during win

Tottenham Hotspur fans have slated head coach Jose Mourinho for his decision to take off Gareth Bale during their win over Wolfsberger in the Europa League.

Spurs were pretty comfortable for large parts of the match, helped by the fact they were comfortably ahead at half time. Even a penalty midway through the second half doesn’t really do too much damage in the grand scheme of things, and they’ll go into the second leg pretty confident of securing qualification.

But that doesn’t mean that the night was without criticism for the Portuguese head coach despite the scoreline, as fans didn’t think he made the right choice in taking off the Welshman with the game seemingly in the bag.

His lack of minutes has been a cause for plenty of debate this season, and there were some supporters who felt that given the circumstances, he’d have been better served staying on and getting fit rather than being rested:

“Unless he’s starting Sunday why would you bring Bale off there? Had a really good game and looked a lot sharper.”

“Bale actually has a decent game and he takes him off?? I just don’t get it”
“Bale was excellent tonight. No idea why he was dragged off but only to be expected, I suppose.”
“Why take Bale off when he’s had his best game since returning and we’re 3-1 up?! Let us have our fun, Mou.”
“Why take him off give him some minutes”
““Same old story, Bale starts and Bale comes off””

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An understandable position to take, but given his track record of injuries, you can also kind of see the ‘better to be safe than sorry’ approach.

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Freelance sports journalist & broadcaster.