Harry Redknapp Slaps £80m Price Tag On Gareth Bale

“Manchester United sold Cristiano Ronaldo [to Real] but they got an offer of £80m,” Redknapp said. “He’s Portuguese and this is more his lifestyle here than Manchester may have been. So in the end, it was good business. I’m sure it would have to be [that kind of money for Bale]. It would be an amazing figure if you ever sold him. But how do you replace a player like that? It’s very difficult. We wouldn’t be wanting to sell a player like Gareth Bale at this time, when we’re trying to build the club.”

Clearly if you want Bale you are going to have to shell out an astronomical amount of money. Madrid have already paid out that much money one before when they signed Ronaldo and they have been linked to Bale in the last few months so a club like theirs spending that much money isn’t unprecedented, but it would be tough to imagine them spending that much for Bale.

For Tottenham supporters, Redknapp’s statements have to be somewhat comforting. They have sold off many top players to bigger clubs before with just Manchester United buying Dimitar Berbatov and Michael Carrick. Supporters have lamented the club selling top players no matter the price because they feel it impacts the team’s ability to build and compete each and every year.

Bryan Ashlock of SBNation’s Tottenham Hotspur blog Cartilage Free Captain feels differently though. If such an astronomical offer came in, he would be firmly in favor of Spurs selling Bale.

Yes, Bale’s pace and power make him a force to be reckoned with, but Premier League teams have shown that by marking him with two men you can take him out of the game. Ronaldo has seen the same tactics and yet he continues to succeed and score goals. At this point in Bale’s career £80 million is an absolutely ludicrous amount for any team to pay for him. If I were Tottenham Hotspur Chairman Daniel Levy I’d jump at any price over £50 million.

It would be tough for Spurs to pass on anything over £50m. The club missed out on the Olympic Stadium and their stadium future is still up in the air so there are no guarantees of future revenue increases. Being able to bring in such a huge amount of money by selling a single player would be tough to say no to, no matter how good the player. With the team still in need of a capable striker any Bale sale could help fund a buy of that needed striker as well as patching other areas of concern. It is not as if the club is short on midfielders anyways with plenty of capable ones sitting on the bench each and every match the club has a modicum of health, although lately the club hasn’t had much of that.