No player at Tottenham Hotspur benefited from Jose Mourinho’s sacking more than Gareth Bale.
The Real Madrid winger sparked into life once Spurs fired the Portuguese coach in April.
Bale finished the season with 11 Premier League goals and six of them were scored in the six games that Ryan Mason took charge of after Mourinho’s departure
The 31-year-old scored a stunning hat-trick against Sheffield United and finished off the campaign with a brace in a 4-2 win away to Leicester City on the final day.
Under Mourinho, the Wales international never really looked like being the player that he proved he could still be under Mason toward the end of the season.
The new Roma boss took aim at Bale’s standard last year, saying this via Wales Online on Saturday: “When we look to Gareth and how many great performances he had, how many goals he scored against the best teams, there were not many or none.”
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It’s true that Bale didn’t have many show-stopping performances in big games for Tottenham.
Then again, the only major Premier League match that Mourinho started him in was the defeat away to Arsenal earlier this year.
The former Chelsea and Manchester United coach started him only five times in the Premier League and that right there ought to suggest that he wasn’t really given a fair crack of the whip.
Here’s how Tottenham fans reacted to Mourinho’s dig:
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