I've just been given quite an interesting take on things. Bit of background first. When I was at uni I did a dissertation on the legality of the way football clubs conduct business transactions. Anyway during my research I became 'friends' with what were then FIFA agents, but are now agents approved by FIFA. Some of them went onto represent players but 2bh I've never ever got any exciting info 'inside info' from them.
Anyway, I asked them about Gareth Bale. They don't know anything about what is going on with him right now (so this isn't ITK on Bale as such) but one of them has had recent dealings with R Madrid and said that he thinks Bale and his agents have decided to push for a move this summer as his value to Spurs is rapidly increasing beyond the means many clubs (including Madrid) have.
Bale wants to go to Spain, but the state of the economy over there means that Madrid & Barcelona no longer have the backing and bank/local government guarantees that they did a few years ago.
While Bale's camp believe he'd still be an attractive proposition for Madrid next summer, they know that after the season he has just had the political pressure to buy him at Madrid is probably never going to be stronger. A poll of Real Madrid fans shows that about 99% of them want Real Madrid to buy Bale and nobody else. In the summer that Barca bought Neymar, thiere is huge political pressure on Madrid to make this move happen. This means that the will to financially overstretch themselves and give Spurs what they want is there THIS summer. It may not be there next summer. Madrid came out of the Modric transfer pretty bruised in my friend's opinion and gave Spurs much more than they had bargained on. The 'relationship' that was formed was part of this and we have made use of R Madrid's scouting reports to buy players both last summer and this. Apparently Moussa Dembele was recommended to us by R Madrid last summer as someone we should buy if we let them have Modric. They showed us a presentation that showed Dembele's stats and compared them to Modric's and they were very similar. Madrid wanted Modric as a political statement, but had scouted Dembele extensively.
They pushed heavily for Modric last summer and they were very wary of dealing with us again, especially given the response to their first enquiries about Bale. They are desperately trying to get the finance together to get close to what they believe is our valuation. They are struggling however and are going to all of their sponsors for help.
My friend believes that Bale's camp are worried that now that he has become such a big commercial asset to Spurs (and would be to another club) he is in danger of being priced out of Madrid's range and that it is only the massive political pressure Madrid are under form their own fan base and Barca's purchase of Neymar that might push them to do a deal acceptable to Spurs this summer.
To summarise the opinion...its likely Bale doesn't want to go to PSG/Monaco and knows that Spurs will not sell to another English club. He wants to try his hand at Madrid and feels that his best chance is this summer.
