IF Gareth Bale is the Premier League’s best footballer, then the Premier League falls some distance short of its claim as the world’s finest football competition.
Tottenham fans think he’s the best, which is about as reliable a source as asking the Pope which religion he rates best. It seems fellow players agree with the North Londoners too, after Bale took out the PFA Player of the Year award this month.
From when the PFA award shortlist was released you could tell the winner would carry dubious validity. The following weekend of action after the shortlist announcement, champions-elect Manchester United took the lead against Fulham when Nani grabbed his 14th assist of the season by setting up Dimitar Berbatov for his 22nd goal. Both had been omitted from the PFA list.
Those that did make it – Carlos Tevez, Scott Parker, Charlie Adam, Sami Nasri and Gareth Bale – were a selection that seemed to carry an obvious, but ultimately undeserving, winner.
Bale, the over-hyped, but humble “honest pro” that fellow ego-driven players could stomach, was always going to win the PFA accolade. A deserved winner proclaimed everyone from the white half of North London or Euro snobs that watch the Champions League and have no handle of weekly Premier League performances. Here is why Bale’s victory should be one that must embarrass even him...
Within an attacking Tottenham side, in 27 appearances in the Premier League this season, Bale has scored seven goals, but mustered just one assist. One. Assist. In 27 games. Using some less than far-fetched mathematics, that means that this creative hub sets up a goal in less than four per cent of his games. A bench-warming veteran or still teething youth player would be ashamed of such a paltry output and we are expected to believe he is the league’s finest?
I had it put to me that this pitiable assist output was related to a misfiring Tottenham frontline and not the quality of Bale’s build-up play. Nonsense. Against Stoke earlier this month, Roman Pavlyuchenko managed to muster twice the amount of assists in the opening 20 minutes than Bale has for the entire season. Tottenham have still managed to score 47 goals this season, it is just that Bale has played little part in their creation.
To further douse the deluded flames of Bale’s end product worth is the amount of goalscoring opportunities he has created – 43 for the entire season – some seven fewer than Tottenham reject Simon Davies at Fulham.
So why did Bale win the PFA award? The timing of voting has a large part to play. Voting took place in March in the wake of Bale’s quite incredible pair of performances against Inter Milan in the Champions League. Now, they were two thunderous efforts, but these were the two biggest games of Bale’s career (plus his hat-trick against an awful defensive unit at Inter Milan came courteous of long-range efforts after a sloppy Inter relaxed as they were 4-0 up against 10-men at home).
Bale’s average domestic performances were overlooked in the midst of Champions League hype. The early voting also didn’t allow for Bale’s horrendous end of season slump, which has included just a single goal, way back on New Year’s Day against struggling Fulham at home. Needless to say, there has not been a Premier League assist during 2011.
There is talk, mainly from Tottenham, that Bale is worth £80m ($123m), the same amount Real Madrid paid for the brilliant, and far more marketable, Cristiano Ronaldo, in 2009. The former World Player of the Year had scored 118 goals in 292 appearances for United ahead of inking his Madrid contract and Tottenham think Bale is worth the same?!
There is no doubt that Bale has the potential to become one of the world’s best. Potential being the operative disclaimer here.
Tottenham fans will kick and scream that Bale, who once appeared in 24 Tottenham games without being on the winning side, contributes far more than these the bare stats display. But I’ll close by reinterring Bale’s underwhelming stats for this Premier League season: 27 appearances, seven goals and just ONE assist, alongside a modest haul of 43 goalscoring opportunities created. Over $120m for that?
Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy is a shrewd negotiator and has managed to get top prices for the likes of Dimitar Berbatov and Michael Carrick in the past, and he is working alongside the ultimate wheeler-dealer in coach Harry Redknapp. There you have a combination that might be keen to cash in on Bale while the hype remains over-inflated and before anyone notices how little he actually contributes to winning football games on a regular basis.
