As the Gareth Bale to Real Madrid saga seems to be coming to a close, it’s hard not to see how things turned out so differently for Gareth Bale and Theo Walcott.

Both were signed from Southampton from an early age and both were courted by clubs such as Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal. But in the end, Theo went to Arsenal and Bale to Tottenham.

Both Theo Walcott and Gareth Bale joined Arsenal and Tottenham respectively as 17 year olds, Theo in 2006 for £12 million and Bale a year later for £10 million. And now in 2013, Bale is set to be the most expensive footballer in the world and move to Real Madrid, while Theo Walcott is still at Arsenal but is their highest paid player.

Both are blessed with exceptional pace which has been their main asset over the years but Gareth Bale has added power, guile and goals to his game whereas Theo hasn’t stalled, but reached a peak of his abilities.

It would be unfair to use Bale’s transfer fee as a base for comparison as even Tottenham fans must realised, the Welshman is grossly over-priced. £93 million for him is quite frankly obscene and the fact that Real Madrid’s have no accountability financially (excuse the pun) is disgusting. A player is worth what another team is willing to pay but you can’t tell me Bale is worth more than Falcao, who has consistently performed at the highest level for 4/5 seasons now. Bale has had one excellent season and 55 goals in 203 games for Tottenham is not in the same league as Cristiano Ronaldo. One think you do have to say about Tottenham is that they obviously have a chairman who is savvy and knows what he’s doing in the transfer market because if it were us, we’d probably sell Bale for about £35 million.

At this moment in time, there is no doubt that Gareth Bale is the better player. There was the famous story that he was going to be sold to Birmingham for £3 million in 2009 after a string of poor performances.

But, and I’ve made this point a few times before, for me Bale has had one outstanding season. Even Gary Neville said he needs to do it season in and season out to be considered world class. I would go as far to say Bale is overrated. Ronaldo was phenomenal for 3/4 seasons before he went to Real Madrid. It is one amazing piece of business by Tottenham.

For me, Theo Walcott has been the far more consistent player and been the better player over the last 5/6 seasons. Bale “set the world alight” with 26 goals last season, Theo scored 21. And when you put that into context, Theo’s record is more impressive. Added to 14 assists he got and considering he plays on the wing, Theo has contributed as much as Bale did to Tottenham last season. And 5 more goals is all well and good but Andre Villas Boas based the entire team around getting the best out of Bale.

The two seasons before last, Bale scored 23 goals while Theo scored 24. And Theo notched up 18 assists while Bale managed 17.

If you compare their records over the last 3 seasons combined, they read as follows:

Theo Walcott – 45 goals and 32 assists

Gareth Bale – 49 goals and 26 assists

And another factor is that along with playing in the Premier League, Theo Walcott has been playing in the Champions League every season while Gareth Bale has mainly played in the Europa League.

I’m not 100% sure about their goal scoring records against the big sides (Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal & Tottenham) but I would be surprised if Bale’s record is better in the big games. Off the top of my head I can remember a lot of goals from Theo against Chelsea and Tottenham in particular.

So there you have it, why Theo is the better player – and I’m sure that will still be the case in 2 years time when Theo is still performing for Arsenal and Gareth Bale is back in the Premier League.

So the latest transfer news is that Arsenal “are working on deals” to bring Karim Benzema and Angel Di Maria from Real Madrid.

Well that is certainly a surprise to me.

Usually you can second guess any potential transfer targets but these are a bit left field but according to BBC Sport, Arsenal are willing to pay £40 million for the France striker.

So what do you think of these potential signings then? Are they the real deal or just another two players we can add to the list of signings that will never happen?

Could they make way for the arrival of Gareth Bale? Who knows.

Our “transfer policy” seems to have taken a very familiar path this summer. And after thinking about it, maybe it is not Arsene Wenger and Arsenal’s intent to actually buy players (because that would be far too easy) but instead to just piss off any team that could be considered a “Top 4 Competitor”. The bids we are lodging are of a football club who have lost touch with reality. If it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so depressing.

We put in bids which are well off the players valuation, get publicly slated by the other club and then look like a bunch of amateurish fucktards.

Let’s look at the evidence. We bid £30 million for Luis Suarez from Liverpool. They turn around and label the bid “derisory”. We put in another bid, this time £40 million and £1. Then we’re called crass and lacking class. And if you’re objective about it, then you can’t disagree. The first bid was never going to be accepted in a million years, and the second is one that basically admits we know about a release clause and Liverpool are obviously miffed because how did we even find out about it? Because it wouldn’t have been through “proper” channels. So in the end, without placing a bid that would actually be seriously considered, we’ve just succeeded in pissing off Liverpool and unsettling the player.

Then onto Newcastle and Yohan Cabaye. Every Arsenal fans favourite manager Alan Pardew was livid at our £10 million bid. He talked about how unprofessional it was that Arsenal bid on the eve of a big game and how “derisory” the offer was. So again, we’ve unsettled the player (as he was dropped for the game against Manchester City) and succeeded in pissing off Newcastle.

So where do we go from here?

If we follow the pattern we can probably predict what is going to happen next.

Who are the teams we can consider rivals for 4th place in the Premier League? There’s Liverpool, Tottenham, Newcastle and Everton realistically.

So the only two teams we haven’t annoyed yet and unsettled their best players are Tottenham and Everton.

Pissing off Everton is easy. Marouane Fellaini and Leighton Baines are their best players so following Manchester United’s failed bid of £28 million for them both, we can lodge a bid of £28 million plus £1. £29 million or £30 million is far too civilised so adding a pound to the Manchester United bid will have the desired effect.

But how about Tottenham? We can’t really bid for Gareth Bale because Real Madrid put an offer of £86 million and that was turned down. But then again thinking about it, we could offer £20 million plus Nicklas Bendtner on the last day of the transfer window and hopefully that would annoy them or at the very least confuse them to the extent that it might knock them off their stride, given we’ve valued Bendtner at £70 million and £3.

Tomorrow marks the start of the new Premier League season. We all know about all of the players we’ve released in this transfer window and that we’ve only brought in Yaya Sanogo, who will forever be remembered as the only signing we made in the summer of 2013.

Mikel Arteta, one of our most important and experienced players looks to be out for 4 to 6 weeks with a thigh problem. Added to that, Vermaelen, Monreal, Sagna, Ramsey, Diaby, Miyaichi and Sanogo are already on the injury table, Cazorla has a 10,000 flight from Ecuador and Bendtner, Park and Frimpong have minimal involvement in years gone by.

That means that we roughly have twelve “fit” players for the seasons opener against Aston Villa, and two of those are goalkeepers.

To say the squad is threadbare would be a massive understatement.

And if clubs came in for Bendtner, Park and Frimpong then they would have been allowed to leave. So our squad could have been even more “light” on numbers.

So what is going on?

We are well past the point of making a marquee signing to appease the fans. Now Arsenal fans just want some mediocre signings to make up numbers in our increasingly depleted squad.

Most teams aim to have two players per position but we are well below that. Injuries happen all the time and God forbid we had an injury to Koscielny, Mertesacker, Szczesny or Walcott. The concern isn’t so much tomorrow’s game against Aston Villa, it’s the two Champions League qualifiers against Fenerbahce.

You do wonder what Arsene Wenger is thinking. And what does he need to do to get the sack, because completely ignoring a £70 million war chest against the wishes of Ivan Gazidis, Stan Kroenke and the rest of the board is a good way to go about it. I’ve heard from various sources now that Gazidis and Kroenke are keen on Arsenal to stay competitive and have urged Arsene to spend, while the manager has dithered in the transfer market and made some very poor decisions – including dropping interest in Gonzalo Higuain for Luis Suarez. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it was obvious from the start that Suarez is a mercenary who would jump ship from Arsenal if Real Madrid came in for him.

The strange thing is well is that Arsene hasn’t even done his bare minimum of buying cut price players from the French league. We’ve got Sanogo but no-one else. We haven’t even recruited many young Frenchmen this summer.

Many senior players such as Arteta, Wilshere, Walcott, Podolski and Ramsey have talked about how Arsenal need to spent to compete. But why is Arsene being so stubborn? Has he had enough and wants to get the sack? Has he lost the plot and thinks we can win the league with twelve fit players?

Or has Arsene filled his swimming pool with £50 notes? Who knows what’s going on.

There is a small part of me that still believes that the longest transfer window that ever was will end in a few signings before the hammer comes down on the 2nd of September.

Maybe, just maybe, Arsene is playing a poker game and waiting until the last days of August to swoop in to make the 4/5 new signings we need. Then again, maybe not.

What a wonderful summer it has been for Arsenal fans. At least Saturday will give us a sweet release from the nightmare that is the transfer window. Well, for a couple of hours anyway, as it doesn’t actually end until September.

Any excitement once the season ended has well and truly vanished into a sea of disappointment, resentment and depression. Sure, we should all support the club through think and thin, but after 8 disappointing seasons Ivan Gazidis (a name I cannot say without feeling sick) gave us fans the worst thing he could give supporters – a thing called hope.

Maybe it was just posturing, showing off, or possibly even real intent, but for whatever reason we haven’t spent a penny (apart from the £390,000 in compensation for Yaya Sanogo). With 2 days until the Premier League season is about to start, Arsenal fans are feeling anything but excited.

After checking online numerous times every day since the season ended to see if we’ve bought anyone, it always ends up the same way. The player we’ve been linked with moves to a different club. Higuain to Napoli, Jovetic to Manchester City, Luis Suarez to er… Liverpool and now Luiz Gustavo to Wolfsburg.

How does this happen? We are either penny-pinching to the point where we are losing out on all of our transfer targets or we have the worst negotiating team football has ever seen. We go back to the old adage about David Dein and whatever your views on him, he didn’t seem to have all of these problems in the transfer market.

Arsene Wenger is like me when I go shopping in town for clothes. I don’t like it and can’t be arsed. I see things I like but I dither around because I know fuck all about “what looks good” and end up not buying anything for the fear that I might look like Justin Beiber one of those kids from Wand Erection. My wife on the other hand has no such problem. Give her my credit card and she’ll buy things I never knew existed. So in that sense, Arsene Wenger needs to be more like my wife.

I am rambling slightly now so I’ll end it there. I will say though that even now, when all hope is almost lost that I would find it inconceivable that Arsenal didn’t make at least 2 signings before the transfer window ends. We have a good base (our form in the last 10 games of last season) so to not build on that would be absolutely criminal.