Bale out of Milan trip
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Bale: Struggling with back injury
Harry Redknapp has confirmed that
Gareth Bale is all but certainly out of Tuesday night's trip to AC Milan in the UEFA Champions League. The influential Welsh wide man played no part in the 2-1 win at Sunderland on Saturday due to a back injury but had held hope of making the glamour trip to the San Siro.
However, Redknapp confirmed in the aftermath of the Premier League victory that Bale is highly unlikely to figure in the stadium in which he scored a brilliant hat-trick as Spurs lost to Inter Milan 4-3 at the group stage.
Redknapp said: "Gareth is not too far away. He's not going to be fit, I don't think, for Tuesday, but he's not too bad.
"The specialists have seen it, he's had an epidural injection. Peter Crouch has had the same problem and he is fine - in fact, his back looked a lot worse on the scan.
"He shouldn't be too long, but Tuesday may be just a bit too soon for him.
"You saw what Gareth did against Inter Milan, when he terrorised them, really, and that would be in their minds an awful lot, I'm sure, if you asked them.
"Everybody in Italy talks about Bale - I went over and watched a game and everyone was asking me: 'Is Bale fit? Is Bale fit?'
"He would scare them to death, for sure."
Rafael boost
But Rafael van der Vaart, who also missed the game at the Stadium of Light with a calf injury, should be fit."Van der Vaart should be okay," Redknapp added.
Spurs had to come from behind to beat the Black Cats, who took an 11th-minute lead when, with William Gallas off the pitch changing his boots, record signing Asamoah Gyan span expertly on Kieran Richardson's low cross and fired past Heurelho Gomes for his 10th goal of the season.
Redknapp said: "I was upset about it and I told William at half-time.
"He had had an injection in his ankle before the game and they bandaged his ankle maybe too tight and he was in a lot of pain. He felt his boots were too tight on him.
"It's a changing game. If I tell you some of the players have 40 or 50 pairs of boots now at the training ground - you used to get two pairs at the start of the year and that was it, didn't you?
"But now, you have never seen so many boots, yellow, pink, green, whatever they are.
"His boots were hurting his foot, so he had to change his boots."
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