When it comes to Tottenham Hotspur’s modern-day greats, there are quite a few players to choose from.
Perhaps the first name that will come to mind for most people is Harry Kane, as while he wasn’t able to win anything in North London, he was a goalscoring force of nature and left the side as their all-time top scorer and a Premier League legend.
The Englishman’s right-hand man, Son Heung-min, is another player that has to be mentioned in this conversation, as while time is starting to catch up with him this season, his consistency over the last decade has been second to none.
However, when it comes to the Lilywhites’ most talented player of the 21st century, we find it hard to look past the world-class Gareth Bale, as while he didn’t have the longevity of the other two, he was simply sensational to watch.
Interestingly, there was a point after he left that the club looked like they had found his heir, but unfortunately, that was not the case, and that player is now struggling to make an impact in Turkish football.
Bale's Spurs career
In May 2007, Tottenham completed the £10m signing of an incredibly exciting and sought-after 17-year-old full-back from Southampton called Bale.
Even though the promising prospect was tipped for greatness early in his sensational career, it took quite some time for him to look at home in North London, as a ligament injury kept him out of action for the second half of his first season.
Then, when he was back to full fitness, he wasn’t on the winning side until his 25th appearance for the club.
Infamously, the talk around the youngster being a bad-luck charm for the club was so common that Sir Alex Ferguson supposedly told Harry Redknapp to take him out of the team, which was advice that the Englishman thankfully ignored.
It was in the 09/10 season that Redknapp moved the former Saints gem further up the pitch to left-midfield and left-wing positions, which proved to be a game-changing decision.
This move led to the Cardiff-born dynamo becoming one of the best attackers in Europe, and while he managed to rack up a haul of 55 goals and 50 assists in 203 appearances before securing his £85m move to Real Madrid, it was in the 12/13 campaign that he became one of the best players on the planet.
For example, in 44 appearances, totalling 3891 minutes, the Spurs phenomenon scored 26 goals and provided ten assists, which comes out to an average of a goal involvement every 1.22 games, or every 108.08 minutes – talk about world-class.
So, when one of the club’s up-and-coming youngsters was compared to Bale a couple of years later, there was an understandable excitement, although the player in question could never get anywhere close to the Welshman’s incredible heights.
The Spurs star who was the next Gareth Bale
When you have players as unbelievably talented as Bale, it’s not too uncommon for promising youngsters coming through after them to be constantly compared to and dubbed the ‘next’ version of said superstars, and that was what happened with Andros Townsend.
The former Spurs ace came up through the club’s academy system and, following several loans between 2009 and 2013, was given a chance to break into and assert himself in the first team, which for a little while was just what he did.
For example, in October 2013, following a promising start to his first proper campaign in the first team, then-England manager Roy Hodgson handed the young winger his debut for the national team, during which he grabbed the headlines with a brilliant long-range strike.
With the wind firmly at his back, the “fearless” attacker, as dubbed by former manager André Villas-Boas, scored another goal in a game against Aston Villa just a week later, after which Jan Vertonghen boldly proclaimed that the then-22-year-old could “be our new Gareth Bale.”
While undoubtedly meant to encourage the youngster, all this did was create an impossible expectation to live up to, and over the following years, the Leytonstone-born ace would start to become less and less important to the team until he was finally sold to Newcastle United for around £12m in January 2016, with a total of just 24 goal involvements for the club in 93 appearances.
Over the next eight years, the 33-year-old made 13 appearances for the Toon, 185 for Crystal Palace, 27 for Everton and then 32 for Luton Town between October 2023 and August 2024.
It was last summer that the former England international made the surprise move to Turkish outfit Antalyaspor.
Crystal Palace
185
16
24
Tottenham Hotspur
93
11
13
Luton Town
32
1
3
Everton
27
7
4
Leyton Orient
26
2
1
Birmingham City
16
0
4
Ipswich Town
16
1
2
Newcastle United
13
4
2
Queens Park Rangers
12
2
2
Millwall
11
2
2
Yeovil Town
10
1
0
MK Dons
9
2
2
Antalyaspor
22
2
2
Leeds United
7
1
1
Watford
3
0
1
Unfortunately, instead of taking the comparatively weaker Süper Lig by storm, the former Lilywhites ace has seriously struggled since leaving English football.
In all, he’s scored just twice and provided two goals in 22 appearances for his new club, which comes out to an average of a goal involvement every 5.5 games and isn’t great for someone who was in the Premier League just last season.
Ultimately, with all that said, while Townsend was never going to be able to live up to the tag given to him by Vertonghen all those years ago, he did have a great career in arguably the most challenging league in the world, and who knows, maybe next year, with a campaign under his belt, he’ll become a star for Antalyaspor.
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