Gareth Bale will not play Wednesday against Sunderland

We posted some quotes from Andre Villas-Boas in an earlier post today addressing MARCA's story about Gareth Bale potentially going to Real Madrid, but apparently Sky missed out on the part where Bale has a slight injury. He won't play in Tottenham Hotspur's first Barclays Asia Trophy game on Wednesday because of a knock. AS has the quote from AVB.

"Unfortunately against Sunderland he won't be fit to play, he's recovering from a knock he had in training so we expect him hopefully to have some involvement in the second game."

You're probably going to see a lot of outlets write something along the lines of BALE ABSENCE FUELS SPECULATION ABOUT MADRID MOVE but you should probably discount that entirely. Obviously Bale moving to Madrid isn't impossible, but him sitting out against Sunderland has nothing to do with that. There's no reason to believe he doesn't have a genuine minor injury, especially since he sat out against Colchester before this Madrid talk started back up.

Hopefully this means we get to see Andros Townsend get a nice run on the right flank with a group of first team players. Kickoff of that game is at 11 am UK, 6 am ET.