Roy Keane said it was difficult for Real Madrid to fully compete with Juventus on Tuesday night. According to him, Madrid having Gareth Bale on the pitch was akin to playing with 10 men.
Bale had zero shots on target, created zero chances and, you guessed it, made zero tackles during the game. For many those stats confirmed his poor performance. The Welshman's agent, Jonathan Barnett, has some other stats though which he believes puts the blame for the performance not with his player but with his teammates.
Barnett told the Telegraph that Bale ran 113 metres per minute in the game but only touched the ball 32 times (the fewest touches of any Madrid player including goalkeeper Iker Casillas). He believes this demonstrates that his player put in the work but was not rewarded with possession. Simply put, the poor performance was down to Bale's teammates not passing him the ball.
We’ve been vindicated by these statistics and it’s what we’ve been saying all along. It proves that people don’t know what they’re talking about when they criticise Gareth, they are not looking at it properly.
Real have to work with Gareth and pass the ball to him more. Give him more of the ball and let him show everybody what he’s good at. He’s going to be the best player at Real Madrid when his team-mates work with him and help him. Hopefully Real will come to terms with this.
I’m very upset that professional pundits don’t realise these facts. Instead of criticising, they should look at it more closely because it’s plain to see when you watch the games.
This really stinks of an over protective parent complaining about their son or daughter not getting in the U14 team. Bale could probably have done without his agent giving these quotes.
