I can see what Pocco is saying to be fair. It was only 2 seasons ago you could easily get held up for ridicule for suggesting Bale was a better prospect than Nani, with the Spurs player being written off as a one trick pony, like a slightly inferior version of Valencia. People were saying he was shit at coming in centrally, shouldnt try and develop that side of his game, didnt have it in him, should stick out to the left. He was just a "Ronaldo Wannabe", many on here were saying.
OK it wasnt a blink of an eye. But it wasnt 5 years ago either. There was a definite lag between his maturing as a player and getting any credit for it on here, which is 95% explained away by the fact he wasnt our player.
Well, no, the majority didn't really say that it was laughable to suggest he wasn't potentially better than Nani, they (and I) laughed at suggestions that he was a better player at the time, because it was completely laughable. Nani had 10 goals and 18 assists in the PL that season, Bale had 7 goals and 2 assists.
Likewise with Valencia, nobody really argued that he was potentially better than him (maybe not to the extent we're seeing now, but you could never really fathom Bale getting so good at the same time Valencia got so shit), but at the time he certainly wasn't, seeing as as the time, Valencia was (close to being) the best winger in the PL.
You'll always get extremes but I think the majority acknowledged that Bale was younger than both of them and could in the future become better, but at the time he definitely was not better than either of them were and it
was laughable to suggest he was.
* someone is definitely going to find a post where I say the total opposite to all this now