Well another day and yet more Gareth Bale news to report!
First up, I would say that the press and media have been exceedingly over reporting the whole story. The sheer volume of slightly differing stories that have been pumped out over the past few weeks make it fairly obvious that the exact details are unknown. Marca and AS, the two Madrid based newspapers have easily been the culprits for many of the regurgitated stories that then appear in the British (and no doubt other European) press. What is abundantly clear, is that Madrid very much want Bale and that Bale would be more than happy to go. However - and I promise this is not my Spurs heart speaking - I very much believe that Bale is also more than happy to stay.
Last night gave the clearest indication of where the situation is at. You may have heard/read about the Andre Villas-Boas post match press conference after the Monaco game last night (more on the Monaco game later!). If not, I highly recommend viewing it
here. Now to me, this would indicate that: we're pretty pissed off with Madrid and their blatant 'tapping up' in public; and that now means we're standing our ground meaning 'pay us an amount on our terms or shut up because we are not going to bend over and take it'.
Whilst this still changes nothing in the grand scheme of things, it does say to me we're laying down the gauntlet to see if Real Madrid genuinely have the money to spend. Remember, when they signed Ronaldo, they took out a bank loan to cover the up front fee - something Manchester United admitted as the reason they could not turn down the offer. So the question would be, can the Spanish banks afford to lend Madrid £/€100m in the current financial situation? And if not, can Madrid rustle up the cash by selling players such as Di Maria and Fabio Coentrao?
The current suggestion from people that I trust to have knowledge from inside the club, is that Madrid's latest offer is to pay in three yearly sums of £20m which as you can imagine, hasn't been met with much glee by Daniel Levy! But honestly, can you blame him? What good does £20m do for us in trying to replace Bale? We would need to expect the selling club to also accept payments in instalments and that simply causes more difficulty.
The other interesting side note to this has been the players Madrid have so far tried to include as make-weights - the aforementioned Di Maria and Coentrao. Madrid have apparently doubled up on their valuation of both players from prices quoted to us/other teams previously - Di Maria to £40m+ and Coentrao to £25m in an effort to adjust the remaining cash sum. This again would heavily suggest that Madrid do not have anywhere near the cash reserves to finance the world record bid.
Finally, perhaps the most important man in all of this that often gets overlooked is the Spurs chairman, Daniel Levy. His reputation goes before him as an incredible negotiator and difficult man to deal with. He has upset numerous clubs around Europe with his negotiations and I'd wager Madrid have never come up against such a man before, who wasn't either insane or an egomaniac lol. Levy will ALWAYS do what he believes is best for Tottenham Hotspur, no matter what the cost to anyone else. He stood firm against Roman Abromovic despite Modric refusing to play and in the face of very public pressure to sell from Chelsea (much like with Madrid). If we do sell, I have absolutely zero doubt that it will be a world record cash sum and it will be paid mostly upfront.
I doubt we will hear the end of things until the transfer window closes, but next weekend's game with Espanyol at White Hart Lane will maybe be an indication of how things stand, should they not have been sorted by then one way or another, what with Bale's 'injury' that he may or may not have.
Away from Bale, but not too far ;) is the news that Clint Dempsey has been sold to MLS side Seattle Sounders for $9m. This quite surprising for a number of reasons, not least that Clint would be prepared to play MLS football when he still was more than capable of playing Premier League football. Also factor in that we have recouped the full amount that we paid for him 12 months ago, which again must go down to a certain Mr Levy ;) By all accounts the Seattle Sounders get very healthy crowds (I heard 40,000 mentioned, which is incredible) so hopefully Clint can further promote 'soccer' in the US.
Finally, on the subject of Spurs and the Monaco game last night. You already know about the injury to Vertonghan (3 weeks out) and possibly also Kaboul's long term injury that he has now suffered another setback, along with the curious sale of Steven Caulker to Cardiff. Well yesterday our one remaining central defender, Michael Dawson has sustained an injury in training that could see him out for quite a while. This meant we went into the battle against Falcao, James Rodriguez, Moutinho, etc with a central defence of Jake Livermore and Zeke Fryers
As you can imagine, it was carnage! Along with the makeshift defence, Sandro, Paulinho, Bale, Holtby and Soldado all didn't even make the trip (we only took 19 players including three goalkeepers!) meaning only Nacer Chadli was the new face in a very 'B Team' feel. As it was, the players looked about as interested as schoolkids in a history lesson.
Monaco on the other hand looked very good, again Falcao in particular. Livermore and Fryers will not be the sternest of tests, but the way he pulled them out of position will cause established defenders plenty of problems. Moutinho too was a joy to watch pulling the strings.
Suarez still could be a slow burner I think. However Brendan Rogers, in keeping with his best David Brent impression has yesterday stated that if Bale is worth £100m then so should Luis Suarez... Fair enough that the quality of both players is similar, but when you consider one has been banned for a total of 20 games in two years whilst in England, 6 of which still to be served this season and you kind of have to re-evaluate the players value, wouldn't you say? There have been rumours that Suarez may take legal action if Liverpool didn't accept a bid for him, but surely even he wouldn't be that stupid? My instinct is that he won't go to Arsenal, purely because I can't see them making a bid that is too good to refuse (even though the £40m bid would in my eyes be good enough) and I don't think Liverpool will accept anything less. Real Madrid could still be the alternative should they not get Bale, but I'd say there is a good chance he will still be at Anfield for this season.
I'll be honest and say I didn't see any of the Swansea v Malmo game because I didn't realise it was a Europa League match on tv! I thought it was just another pre-season friendly lol. By all accounts though they looked pretty impressive with Bony in particular making an instant impact. Laudrup has done well to get his new signings gelling together and they look good to go into the new season settled and able to continue building on what they had last season. I believe that the second leg is also on tv next week, so I will try to remember it and let you know more thoughts :)
I hope you are right with your prediction for Ajax - and maybe even better. I think as a football fan, there is something wrong if you can't admire Ajax and the way they do things from the coaching, to the players they bring though and sell on for big profit whilst still playing 'proper' football. Here's a question for you Gert-Jan: if Ajax were a Premier League team over say the past 10 years, where do you think they would be with the added finances available to them whilst being up against comparatively stronger teams?
and hopefully see Wenger retreat back into his shell of spending large sums of money 
)
There is just too much smoke for there not to be at least an element of truth going on. It's almost unquestionably Bale's agent that is feeding the news outlets and encouraging Madrid to be as blatant as possible about wanting him. Zidane is still piping up about us 'not allowing poor Gareth to fulfil his dream and miss out on a now or never, once in a lifetime opportunity'; players such as Casillas and Sergio Ramos have said how they are looking forward to him coming and Marca are sounding even more like a kids fanzine than ever.
Fee is undisclosed but smart money suggests it's €12m upfront with three further payments of €6m over the next three years. So this is by far the highest fee paid by Tottenham for a player and sees us break our transfer record for the second time this summer.
