Is Bale Worth £100m?

Amid newspaper claims that Manchester United have made two world-record bids for Gareth Bale this summer, we examine whether the Real Madrid forward is really worth £100m.

According to reports in Tuesday’s Sun, United manager Louis van Gaal wants to bring Bale back to the Premier League this season, with the Dutchman even prepared to break the bank to sign the player.

United are expected to offload playmaker Angel Di Maria to Paris Saint-Germain before the transfer window closes next month, with Bale seen as an ideal replacement for the Argentine at Old Trafford.

Sky Bet certainly think there's a chance, with the odds on the 26-year-old returning to England having been cut to 9/2 in recent days.

However, does it make sense for United to spend such huge sums to lure the Wales international to the Theatre of Dreams? Here are the arguments for and against making such a move:

GOOD VALUE FOR MONEY...

Show us your medals

In Bale’s debut campaign at the Santiago Bernabeu after joining the club from Tottenham in September 2013, the winger played a starring role as Madrid won both the Copa del Rey and the Champions League.

Not only did Bale score a memorable winner against Barcelona in the first of those finals, but his goal against city rivals Atletico Madrid in the latter also went a long way towards seeing the club win an historic La Decima.

And surely United would consider it £100m well spent if Bale were to have a similar impact on their own fortunes, especially if his arrival resulted in the club winning a fourth European Cup next May.

Best of British

Buying British players can be an expensive business these days, as Manchester City showed when splashing out £49m to sign Raheem Sterling in July, despite the 20-year-old having featured in less than 100 league games for Liverpool.

On that basis, it is understandable that Bale, with a decade of experience at the highest level in both England and Spain behind him, would be worth double Sterling’s transfer fee.

Brand value

United are clearly determined to land Bale, with the club having also attempted to sign the Welshman last summer, and with good reason too given his likely impact off the pitch.

United can expect to sell a shedload of Bale shirts around the world were he to sign for the club - just as Madrid did when prizing David Beckham from Old Trafford in 2003 - making what may initially appear a hefty £100m investment seem like value for money further down the line.

And Madrid actually offloaded Claude Makelele that summer because he was famously not shifting enough jerseys, as the midfielder told France Football: "He [Real president Florentino Perez] was not interested in me because I was not going to help sell any club shirts."

Premier experience

United want a Marquee Signing to replace the PSG-bound Di Maria at Old Trafford next season.

And Di Maria’s ill-fated 12 months at the club shows the danger of spending big sums on players with no proven Premier League experience, with United having lavished a British-record £59.7m on a forward who managed just three goals in the league last season.

Bale, though, would provide no such risk, with the wide man having scored 27 times and provided 12 assists in his last 58 top-flight games for Spurs before leaving White Hart Lane two years ago.

POOR VALUE FOR MONEY...

The invisible man

After Bale’s impressive first campaign at the Bernabeu, the flying winger endured a far tougher second season at Madrid as the club won no trophies, with coach Carlo Ancelotti losing his job as a result in May.

Meanwhile, Bale found himself on the receiving end of some harsh criticism from both the Madrid press and the Los Blancos faithful, who even booed him after a win against Espanyol in January.

“I feel some players still don’t trust him enough,” was Spanish football expert Guillem Balague's assessment of Bale’s displays last season.

“Why not? Partly because he doesn’t seem to link up enough with the team. Despite the fact he runs a lot, he’s the 11th player in recovering the ball, so they don’t see him giving enough solutions.”

And it is true that in Madrid’s key games, when they most needed him - such as in the title decider at Barcelona and the Champions League semi-final with Juventus - Bale often went missing.

Can United therefore risk lavishing the small matter of £100m on a player who has recently struggled to impose himself on the big stage?

It’s a numbers game

However, it was not just in Madrid’s big matches that Bale failed to justify his £85.3m price tag last season, but it was also in their league campaign as a whole.

In fact, comparing Bale’s 2014/15 La Liga stats with those of Luis Suarez, who Barcelona bought from Liverpool last summer for ‘just’ £75m, makes for interesting reading.

Despite playing in four fewer games after being suspended for the start of the season for biting Giorgio Chiellini at the 2014 World Cup, Suarez still scored 16 goals, three more than Bale managed.

The Uruguay forward’s shot conversion rate of 25.53 per cent was superior to the Wales international’s 15.43 per cent, with Bale also contributing fewer assists (9) than Suarez provided (14).

And finally in 27 league outings, Suarez created 60 chances, while Bale could only create 51 in his 31 contests.

All of which begs the question: given Bale's La Liga form last season, especially when judged alongside how Suarez performed in his debut campaign for Barca, is Bale really worth a £100m outlay?

Credit: Skysports.com