It was one of the biggest transfer sagas in world football back in 2013. The ‘will he stay’ or ‘will he go’ drama surrounding Gareth Bale and Real Madrid’s interest in him.
Tottenham dragged out a potential deal until the very end, when they eventually gave in and secured a world-record deal to let Bale leave north London.
But whilst the Lilywhites managed to squeeze every single penny out of Madrid, they didn’t exactly spend the money they were going to get for him wisely.
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The likes of Nacer Chadli, Vlad Chiriches, Etienne Capoue, Christian Eriksen, Paulinho and Erik Lamela all arrived that summer on permanent deals, but it was Roberto Soldado who arguably went on to symbolise the post-Bale nightmare.
The Spaniard joined the club on the back of a goal-scoring record that very few could match right across Europe. His exploits at Valencia were unquestionably of the highest standard, and it was understandable why Spurs and Andre Villas-Boas thought he could be the man to spearhead their attack.
He scored 82 goals in just 141 games for the La Liga side and would surely have been expected to achieve similar feats in north London. But sadly for him and Spurs, that didn’t turn out to be the case.
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The man signed for £26m scored a measly 16 times in 76 games, before returning back to his native Spain to join Villareal. All in all, it meant that Soldado cost Spurs an eye-watering £1.6m for every time he found the back of the net.
Just having cash to burn can sometimes lead to a scatter-gun approach of just buying players without taking as much time as you usually would to do your due diligence and homework.
Levy would have hoped that whilst they may eventually lose Bale, the big-money players they would bring in would more than off-set the loss of Welsh star’s departure. But instead, Soldado epitomised how they dropped the ball with the whole situation, and it was no surprise that it was only after Mauricio Pochettino came in as manager that things began to look up again.
Meanwhile, this Spurs star is now set to stay at the club this summer.