Tottenham boss Andre Villas-Boas admits the Gareth Bale saga did weigh heavily on their summer plans.
Bale was only sold to Real Madrid on deadline day after months of speculation.
AVB said: "In the end, as you saw our chairman say, the pressure we were under from the player has been intense, the influence of Madrid on the mental state of the player has been very great, you reach a point where if you don't accept [the offer] can you go forward with the player in that mental state.
"Gareth's last game for Tottenham was five weeks ago. Since then a lot of things happened and we had a soap opera which was hard to handle.
"The player is now happy and we should be happy to have the biggest transfer fee in history. The fans will be the least happy.
"When a bigger club come in it is hard to persuade a player to stay, even at a club that wants to get better - we want to win trophies, the path would have been shorter with him and it might be longer now but we have players who want to achieve things."
