Gareth Bale will still be at Real Madrid after the transfer window closes unless the Spanish club pay up his contract.
There have been suggestions since Real Madrid returned to training that the club have agreed to pay half the player’s salary if he goes out on loan or allow him to leave on the cheap.
But there has been no contact between player and club and neither proposal will succeed in moving Bale on.
Bale earns £15.2m-net-a-season (around £30m gross) and has two years on his current deal. That means Madrid would need to find around £60m if they are to shift the Wales international.
Ill feeling that still lingers from a u-turn performed by the club last year over allowing him to move to the Chinese Super League has been influential in the lack of any leeway in the player's position.
The club currently cannot afford the pay-out so they are resigned to keeping one of their top earners into the penultimate season of the huge deal he signed in 2016.
As of Thursday morning Bale had still not been reunited with coach Zinedine Zidane, meaning their last contact remains the brief chat ahead of the last-16 Champions League second leg against Manchester City when Bale told the coach that – knowing he would be playing no part – he preferred not to travel.
The no-show in Manchester and the fact that Bale returned to Madrid after international duty with a slight knock and trained in the gym – along with several players returning from international duty – has further riled the player's critics.
But not all commentators have come out against the Welshman. In El Mundo Jaime Rodriguez wrote on Thursday of Bale's decision not to travel with the squad to the Etihad.
He said: ‘The request did not grate with Zidane who knows what the Brit is like. Another player might have wanted to travel, even knowing he wouldn’t play, but not Bale. That’s how he is and the dressing room respects that. Why? ‘Because he has given us a lot,’ they say.
'When they read comparisons between Hazard and Bale, because the two both seem prone to injuries, it is whispered that hopefully in terms of trophies, the Belgian can match Bale because then he would have been a success.’
The Hazard-Bale comparisons are currently helping Bale's case. Pictures of Hazard looking unfit, coupled with comments from his Belgium coach Roberto Martinez, have made Hazard Madrid's new primary concern. Even last season Bale scored more goals than the former Chelsea forward, albeit two to Hazard’s one.
Zidane has also been pinpointed as a factor in the current stalemate. The French coach’s decision to leave Bale so far on the margins of the squad that he feels there is no point travelling to games has only served to devalue him and further dissuade any potential buyers.
Of the many one-to-one meetings that are likely to take place over the next two weeks before Real Madrid play their first game, several will involve Bale’s future.
There will have to be a conversation between coach and player. But there may also be one between the coach and club with Zidane being encouraged to try one last time to bring the 31-year-old forward into his plans, if only to avert the financially disastrous stalemate continuing.