The Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has revealed that he tried to sign the Welsh winger Gareth Bale before the former Southampton man moved to Tottenham. Bale was signed from Southampton for £ 5 million as a teenager. Even though he did not have the best of starts with the Premier league club, he has since risen to the position of being one of the best players in the world. He has been linked with all the major clubs like Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United, and Chelsea in the last few months. Ferguson has said ahead of the match with Tottenham that Bale was one of his transfer targets before Tottenham secured his signature.
However, the 70-year-old has revealed that he does not have any regrets about not signing Bale because there have been many situations in which United have not signed players they liked a lot. Ferguson has quoted the example of Paul Gascoigne, who also moved to Tottenham despite interest from Manchester United. At 23 years of age, Bale still has a lot of time in football. The winger has already scored close to 10 goals this season. He is regarded as one of the important players at Tottenham, and he was responsible for the 3-2 victory over United earlier in the season.
“We tried to buy him from Southampton and they turned us down. It was not the boy who turned us down, it was Southampton, then a few weeks later he signed for Tottenham. It happens. You don’t get them all. As I said before, we would have loved to have got (Paul) Gascoigne but we didn’t – but we did get Paul Ince and he was a great player for us. These things happen,” said Ferguson, whose team will be looking to restore the seven point lead in the table.