Gareth Bale believes Joe Rodon should be playing consistently at Tottenham Hotspur.
The Wales legend voiced his surprise that his Welsh compatriot was struggling to get game time at his former club and believes the 24-year-old defender has repeatedly proven his calibre for consistent first-team selection but has failed to be given the chance he deserves.
“For me personally, I feel like he should be playing at Tottenham. I think he’s shown time and time again how good he is, I think personally when I was there last year, I felt he deserved to be playing,” Bale said.
“I don’t feel like he’s really had the opportunity to play a consistent run of games at Tottenham and I feel like if he did, he would be fantastic for them.”
Game time has come at a painful premium for the young Welshman who has fallen steeply down the pecking order under Jose Mourinho, Nuno Santo Espirito and now Antonio Conte. Since his arrival from Swansea City in October 2020 for a fee in the region of £11m, Rodon has mined just 13 Premier League appearances, totalling 807 minutes. Yet, 12 of those appearances arrived last season, a testament to the defender’s recent toil.
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This season, Rodon has played only 86 minutes of Premier League football, 78 of which arrived last September in a 3-0 loss to Crystal Palace.
Tallying in all competitions does little to doll up the portrait. Rodon can boast a scraping of 518 minutes scattered across the Europa Conference League (324 minutes), FA Cup (193 minutes) and EFL Trophy (1 minute) this season.
An uptick in form from Eric Dier and the arrival of European-calibre defender Cristian Romero last summer have done little to assuage Rodon’s predicament. That the defender eases in so seamlessly into his Wales duties beside Spurs teammate Ben Davies – most recently in Wales’ World Cup play-off final victory over Ukraine – has made for controversial fodder amongst the Spurs loyal and become a slight concern amongst Wales’ management after their qualification for a first World Cup in 64 years.
“I think he can go to another level. He’s been very good, but I think there’s more to come from him. And I think he can achieve that by playing week in and week out at domestic level,” said Wales manager Robert Page.
“In an ideal world, for us to go to that next level and sustain it, it’s important that we have more players playing week in and week out.
“He’s a Premiership player. If you were to draw a Premiership player, it’s Joe Rodon to a T, isn’t it? He’s got all the attributes, but he just needs to be playing week in and week out to sustain that level that he’s been giving us.”
The under-utilised defender is believed to be set to leave the London club in the summer as reports suggest that Rodon has grown increasingly frustrated with his lack of opportunities.
And Bale confirmed that Rodon is more than conscious of the need for consistent first-team minutes.
“Of course he knows himself he should be playing week in and week out. He wants to be playing week in and week out,” Bale said. “Even if he has to go to another team, he’s going to strengthen that team no matter who it is.”
However, Bale hailed Rodon’s professionalism in light of the side-line tribulations facing the defender who was previously touted as a future world-class defender and admitted to giving Rodon advice.
“He’s a top professional, he doesn’t moan – he tries to moan but I tell him not to. I just say keep your head down, keep working because that way the manager can never use that excuse to not play you,” Bale said.
Antonio Conte sung similar praises after the defender’s unswerving display against Austria in March during Wales World Cup qualification semi-final, calling the player a “really, really great man” and applauding his unflagging commitment to fitness and training and admitting feeling impressed by the performance.
Even so, Conte did not call on the defender once in the remainder of the Premier League season as Spurs fought for a Champions League spot with north London rivals Arsenal.
With World Cup just months away, a move away from the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is believed to best suit all parties, lest Spurs risk Rodon’s development stalling further as he festers on the sidelines.
