Another day, another story about Tottenham wanting to sign Gareth Bale. This time, El Espanyol say Bale only has two choices this summer – stay at Real Madrid or return to Spurs. Vital Spurs have explained how our dwindling reputation and lack of money rules us out of signing Bale, but the media, former players and football pundits can’t resist.
Bale agent Jonathan Barnett played down talk of an exit in July, but his situation in Madrid is untenable. Zinedine Zidane has been public about his desire to sell the 31-year-old and says Bale no longer wants to play under him, so a departure looks on the cards. A return to Tottenham is not going to happen, however.
Bale’s asking price is €17m (£15.3m) this summer, but his salary is £350k-per-week/£18.2m-a-year, so he’d break our wage structure if signed. Our revenue dropped due to the Covid-19 pandemic and forced us to change to a sell-to-buy policy.
We signed Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg for £15m and sold Kyle Walker-Peters for £12m. We replaced Michel Vorm with Joe Hart on a free transfer and agreed a two-year contract worth £27.5k-per-week/£1.43m-a-year. Every decision we’re making in the transfer market has been about extracting as much value as possible. Bale, while immensely talented, isn’t worth our time.
The 31-year-old is in the eve of his career and struggled for fitness throughout his time in Madrid – Bale has featured in only 171 of 266 La Liga games (64%), amassing 12,499 minutes from a possible 23,940 (52%). He’s featured in just over half of the games available, so he’d miss too much of the season at Tottenham to be worth bringing back.
It’s worth noting that Bale isn’t the same player that left us. He’s won two Liga titles, four Champions League crowns and one Copa Del Rey at Real, so why would he come back? We haven’t won a trophy in any competition since Bale left and Real won the Liga title while we finished sixth last season, so it would be a big step down if he was to return.
In other news, Tottenham could end up paying £40m for Callum Wilson transfer