Each year in the Gooner end of season poll, we are asked to vote for the current squad member we would most like to see leave the club. I am afraid that, unless things change dramatically over the coming weeks, I’ll be voting this year for Theo Walcott.

His performance in the cup at Stoke was the last straw. He barely touched the ball and when he did he generally miscontrolled it or lost it. I know that people can argue that he hasn’t played in his best position or that he was given very little service. But truly great players impose themselves on games, even when playing out of position. Truly great players make the crucial run or find the extra yard of space so that their team mates will pass to them. Theo just looks pedestrian.

It gives me no pleasure to write this. Like everyone else I was excited when we signed him and I desperately wanted him to succeed. However, he’s just one in a long line of high-profile signings who have failed to live up to expectations. Charlie Nicholas scored some memorable goals against the Scum and helped us win the League Cup in 1987 but ultimately wasn’t good enough to make the transition from Scottish football to English football. Jose Reyes provided us with a tonic when a club with supposedly no spare money surprised us all by signing him but he, too, failed to deliver.

The point about these people – and there are others I could name – is that we were so desperate to succeed that we kept deceiving ourselves and making excuses for them. We kept telling ourselves how much talent they had or that we’d see the best of them as soon as they recovered from injury/got a bit of confidence back/had a decent run of games etc. It never happened and I think we’ve got to be realistic and face the fact that, talented though he undoubtedly is, Theo is never going to be a star for Arsenal.

When he is interviewed it is clear that Theo is bright and articulate. No doubt that, and his stable family background, were among the factors that persuaded Wenger, who had learned from his experiences with Pennant and Bentley, to sign him up. Sadly, however, there is no correlation between everyday intelligence and football intelligence.

No one would call Gazza or Rooney intellectuals. But with the ball at their feet on a football field they know instinctively, and brilliantly, what to do. Theo is just the opposite. Quite simply, he lacks a football brain. He has natural talent but when he has to think about what to do, time after time he makes the wrong choice. He dribbles when he should cross, he passes when he should take the defender on, he goes inside when he should go wide etc. He lacks the natural instincts of a great footballer. To some extent good coaching can remedy this but it’s easier to coach a defender than a forward and Theo has now had four years of the best coaching that Arsenal can provide and there’s no obvious sign of improvement.

One of the reasons why Theo has attracted so much attention is that he came to prominence so young and he is an English player at Arsenal. But at Stoke we started with four English players. One may be a veteran but both Emmanuel-Thomas and Eastmond are a year-and-a-half younger than Theo and looked far more promising than he did.

At the last minute a work crisis meant I couldn’t get to Stoke so I watched it on TV. When Theo was trudging off miserably after being substituted the commentator noted: “He’s a million miles from the England team”. It wasn’t Theo’s fault that he was picked for the last World Cup squad, with all the ridicule and false expectations which that created, but the notion that he should go South Africa is simply laughable.

It is also Theo’s misfortune that his greatest moments in an Arsenal shirt – goals against Chelsea at Cardiff and Wembley and that run against Liverpool – were all in vain as we lost each of those games. Nevertheless, there are some good memories. However, the time has come to admit that this has been an experiment that has failed. He’s not good enough. We should sell him for whatever we can get and move on.