GARETH BALE is making a fantastic impact at the moment, but I do hope he keeps his feet firmly on the ground.

Don’t get me wrong, Gareth is a fantastic player and he is having a great spell, but it’s amazing how quickly we build players up in this country.

He is probably the best player in the country at the moment, but to be a great player you have to do the business over seasons.

Hopefully Gareth isn’t being built up too much through all this.

I don’t know him but, fortunately, I can’t see it all going to his head by the way he has reacted so far.

He seems a very level-headed young man who says he doesn’t drink and doesn’t go to nightclubs – I would be surprised personally if he never went to nightclubs! – but hopefully all the hype won’t affect him. It’s important he keeps on doing as well as he can, concentrating on his football and, over the next few years, hopefully he can build a reputation for being a great player and a very consistent player.

We see too many players who have a great five or six months at top level, earn a massive contract and then you don’t hear too much of them again.

Next you hear of them they are playing lower down the ladder four or five years down the line.

I don’t think that will be the case with Gareth and, like so many other people have said, it’s a shame he isn’t English.

What a bonus it would have been to our national side to have Ashley Cole and Gareth Bale (assuming he plays as well as he is doing) on our left hand side – because that would have been a great attacking force for the coach to work with.

We can’t change where he’s from, though, so there’s no point going on about it.

All we should do is wish him all the best and also congratulate his club manager, Harry, Redknapp, for helping him to play so well and for putting together such an attractive team in such a short space of time.

To beat Inter Milan, the European Champions, 3-1 and in such great style is a tremendous achievement, especially as Spurs destroyed them for a while.

They have put themselves in a great position to go through and join Chelsea in the knockout stage, and I expect Manchester United and Arsenal to join them before too long.

It would be great to have one, if not two, English clubs in the final this year which, of course, is being staged at Wembley. That would be fantastic for our league.

I’D LIKE to personally welcome Benik Afobe to the football club.

Having watched him for half an hour against Sheffield Wednesday and heard about how he did at Cambridge on Saturday, I don’t think there’s a great deal of advice I can give him really.

For such a young lad, at 17, he already seems to have pretty much the full package of attributes to make a very successful career for himself.

He has strength, unbelievable speed and he looks to have a very good touch on the ball.

On top of that, he seems to have a good footballing brain because as well as showing skills for himself, he holds the ball up well and brings other people into the game.

The thing I particularly liked over at Hillsborough was that when he got the chance to attack he did – there was no hesitation.

The main thing I would say to Benik, perhaps, is to make sure he keeps a level head and works hard at his game, but from what people have said about him, he’s a smashing lad who will have no trouble doing exactly that.

I would also advise him to make the most of his loan spell with us and to listen to everything that the manager, Lee Clark (inset) and his coaching staff have to say, because they are good people who have been there and done just about everything in the game.

The fact Arsenal were prepared to let one of their best young players come to us for a first experience of the game outside of Highbury shows how highly we are thought of in the game.

It’s a credit to the manager, his staff and the way we run the club and it’s also a credit to our players, because it shows that Arsenal believe we try to play the game in the right way.

Playing here will definitely benefit Benik, and I hope he enjoys the whole experience.

I’VE been delighted to see our lads from Huddersfield Giants playing for England in the rugby league Four Nations Down Under.

It’s a great credit to the club and to their coach, Nathan Brown, that six of them were picked for the tour.

That’s a quarter of the squad and it’s a measure of how far the Giants have progressed and how highly rated they have become.

Not only that, but Leroy Cudjoe and Eorl Crabtree are Huddersfield lads and it’s always brilliant to see our own homegrown talent performing on the biggest stage of them all.

While I know they found it tough going against New Zealand and Australia, it was pleasing to see the lads defeat Papua New Guinea on Saturday.

I’m not too much of a fan of rugby union – if I’m allowed to say that at this time of year – but I do enjoy watching the rugby league, and especially when we’ve got lads from the Giants involved in the national side.