Real will miss out on David Villa.

Real Madrid will miss out on signing Valencia striker, David Villa, after shooting themselves in the foot over the transfer fee. Valencia are thought to value the Spain front man at around £40 million but were asking Madrid to pay in excess of £50 million.

This could be due to the way that Madrid have already been acting in the summer transfer market with the signings of Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo. The only reason that Valencia would have been asking so much for their best player is the simple fact that Madrid quite clearly have more cash stashed away than any other club in Spain.

It could mean a new chance for either Barcelona or Liverpool to sign Villa and they would probably get him for the smaller fee of £40 million. It is thought that Villa wants to stay in Spain but he has said if he does go abroad then the only club he would join would be Rafael Benitez’s side.

It has been no secret that his strike partner for Spain, Fernando Torres, has expressed his immense interest that the club do whatever it takes to bring him to the Premier League and if it happened then Villa wouldn’t have a problem settling down because so many of the Liverpool squad are from Spain, including the manager, who once managed Villa when he was in charge of Valencia.

Madrid’s Director of Sport, Jorge Valdano said: “If Barca have offered 50 million for Villa, plus Bojan and Caceres, I would sell if I was Valencia because we're not going to try and top that. We have been in discussions over the last week and there were disagreements. On top of money, they want a player and that was causing problems.”

“What had seemed to be a deal on track instead became twisted. We don't know why the price became so high.”

The reason the price became so high is quite simple. When you start throwing your money around as a football club then other clubs with the best players will automatically want more as the original club can obviously meet a high valuation. This was demonstarted perfectly in the Premier League when Manchester City were quoted over £100 million for Kaka and then only a few months later, Milan sold him for just over half of this amount.

A move for Villa looks pretty much set in stone and the only remaining problem is where he goes. Obviously he would like to stay in Spain and Valencia would probably prefer to accept the offer from Barcelona but if the player wants a new challenge then he would be a fantastic signing for Liverpool. He could well be the player that the English side needs to push on across all fronts next season and it could be an arrival that helps Rafa Benitez keep a lot of his more influential players.

Liverpool would have a hard time though in matching the financial and player offer that Barca have put together but it is all now down to Villa.