View: Aston Villa can unlock best of Gareth Bale, Steven Gerrard will be key
Steven Gerrard has already managed to persuade some top players to come and play for Aston Villa and the best could still be yet to come.
Philippe Coutinho has already been confirmed to stay at Villa Park on a permanent basis after his loan spell during the 2021-22 campaign and now Gerrard is keen to bring Gareth Bale to the Midlands [The Guardian].
Tottenham Hotspur also want to bring him back to the Premier League as do Newcastle United as he looks to find a new home before he heads to the Qatar World Cup with Wales for the first time in November.
The 32-year-old has struggled at Real Madrid over the past couple of years and his toxic relationship with the club’s fans and board directors means that marriage is set for a divorce.
Gerrard, therefore, wants to reignite that flame within him at Aston Villa and he could be just the man to do it.
One attribute that every manager desires in a player is a quality set-piece and there are fewer players better than Bale when the ball is dead set in front of him.
Especially for Wales, he has the knack to hit the sweet spot on the ball to create the perfect movement through the air and still pick out the very top corner to give the keeper no chance.
Later in that same game, when Wales beat Austria 2-1 in World Cup qualifying, his accuracy when shooting was at large again despite being in a tight situation.
There was only a very small area in which he could squeeze the ball but such is the quality in his left boot, he placed the ball better than any mere mortal could with their hands to double his side’s lead.
And let’s not forget those moments of magic that he can produce from absolutely nowhere with none more memorable than that bicycle kick against Gerrard’s former side Liverpool in the Champions League final of 2018.
You have to be a very unique character to have the audacity to even try such a shot but to go and pull it off is only doable for the very best of a generation.
This is the kind of genius Aston Villa could be getting if they push on and seal a deal to sign Bale which would be a move few fans would be complaining about.
In other Aston Villa news, at the other end of the pitch, Gerrard fancies signing a recently-relegated defender from a team in similar colours to the Villans.