[1] He arrived at Spurs as a 17 year old. Of course he wasn't going to be setting the world alight right away, especially as a left back. Over the past year, Bale has been the superior player, without question. Nani has had his moments, but Bale has been almost consistently phenomenal. He's stronger than Nani, a better runner of the ball, has a better control of the ball, is a better crosser and has superior passing ability. The way he picked out Crouch and Pavelyuchenko tonight with such ease was outstanding. And as you say, he's 3 years younger. If given the option to swap, I have a fairly clear idea what Ferguson would do.
[2] Recognising that Bale is a better player than Nani does not make me a Nani hater.
[1]: I agree it would be ridiculous to expect Bale to be firing on all cylinders form the get-go. In fact, just as ridiculous as it would to expect Nani to do the same, coming from a very different culture, both on and off the pitch. Only reason I brought it up was because you used that as an argument against Nani.
Other than that, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one! I thoroughly believe that Nani has been performing more or less consistently at the highest level since that match against Hull in January where it all seemed to turn around. He's been creating goals, winning matches, tearing (good) teams to shreds more or less on his own, and in my opinion he has, with a little help from Rooney going awol since March, cemented his place as our most important attacking player. If that's not enough to convince you that he's easily at least as good as Gareth Bale then I suspect nothing ever will.
And don't get me wrong, I'm probably just as big of a fan of Gareth Bale as you are (well, maybe not, but nothing would delight me more than seeing us replace the original Welsh Wizard with the up and coming one), but being the flatmate of a Spurs fan I've watched my share of Spurs games and I can recall several occasions where Bale has failed to make a significant impact on the game during the last year. The two most recent examples that come to mind are against Everton and us, where he was kept relatively quiet by the legendary and mighty giants of full-backs Phil Neville and Rafael da Silva respectively.
Measuring and comparing their skillsets as you did seems pretty pointless to me, as it would be impossible to do objectively. I for instance see Nani as Bale's superior when it comes to ball control, where you rate Bale. And at the end of the day it only matters how they utilize the tools they've got, and Nani has a much better end product, there's no discussion about it. In the league so far this season, Nani has started 10 matches plus coming off the bench once, and he has
8 assists and 4 goals to show for it. Gareth Bale has started 10 matches and he has scored
2 goals but he has
0 assists. His crosses today were fantastic, but if that was a fair and accurate reflection of his true ability you'd have expected him to pick out a team mate at least once during the ten league games he's played, no?
And since we're also talking calendar year, it is worth noting that Bale had 6 assists last season against Nani's 10 last season (both had 3 goals each, with nearly identical number of matches played). Not a whole lot in that, but since the start of the new Nani's stats are absolutely ridiculous (Going out on a limb here, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a more effective player so far this season, Ronaldo and Messi aside), whereas Bale's are OK at best.
[2]: I certainly don't peg you for a Nani hater because you rate Bale a better player, I just think your perspective of both players seems skewed. But I guess that's where my proposition of agreeing to disagree comes into play, even though I find it absolutely amazing that anyone can claim that Bale is a far superior player to Nani at this point.
