Theo Walcott is on the brink of leaving Arsenal for Everton with 108 goals to his name but for many his potential remains unfulfilled.
He has scored as many as Frank Stapleton and only 14 players have amassed more in the club’s history but still people expected more given the excitement around his arrival at Arsenal in 2006.
The Gunners agreed a world record-breaking deal for a 16-year-old - costing an initial £5million rising to £12m - despite Walcott having started just 12 games in senior football.
The Gunners were so confident he was the real deal they settled the outstanding balance early in April 2008 - bringing the total cost down to around £9m - even though the realities of self-funding the Emirates Stadium move began to bite.
Although Arsenal were taking advantage of Southampton’s financial difficulties, it underlined the faith they had in this precocious teenager.
It was a sentiment reflected at international level. Before playing a single Premier League game, Sven-Goran Eriksson took Walcott to the 2006 World Cup.
“I’m not crazy,” he said on making the announcement. Walcott, famously, did not play at the World Cup and would not feature in another England squad for almost two years.
A personal view is that his style works against him. Walcott’s blistering pace engineers him so many chances but sometimes he delivers, sometimes he does not. Euphoria or frustration follows.
These moments are a microcosm of his career. This is not to absolve him of any responsibility, of course. Some say he makes the wrong decision too often.
He has not always taken opportunities and his detractors argue he has become too comfortable at Arsenal, a charge that has been levelled at others.
Perhaps both sides have been too loyal. Other players have grown weary of the lack of progress and agitated for a move but it is not in Walcott’s nature. He has had the same agent, the same PR and, so far, the same club for his entire top-flight career. He is married to his childhood sweetheart and is, from personal experience, a delight to deal with.
In the midst of Arsenal’s toughest spell last season, I asked Theo for an interview after Arsenal’s 3-1 defeat at Anfield. He declined but promised to honour my request next time. That ended up being Arsenal’s 5-1 Champions League home defeat by Bayern Munich, consigning them to a 10-2 aggregate loss on one of the worst nights in Arsenal’s history.
Not many footballers would front up in such circumstances but Walcott bucked the trend, calling me into the tunnel to get out a message urging unity at a club so close to his heart.
Leaving will not come easy to him. He is at the heart of the Emirates Stadium generation, a period when Arsenal collectively struggled to compete and youth was given its head.
It has been argued by former England coach Glenn Hoddle, among others, that Walcott was fast-tracked in importance and responsibility to the extent he was not coached with sufficient intensity during his formative years.
And so any sense of unrealised ambition should be shared by Eriksson and Arsene Wenger, who for years told him he would be a centre-forward without ever giving him a sustained run in that position. One day, one day.
Walcott became a victim of Wenger’s switch to a 3-4-2-1 formation: since doing so last April, he has started one League game. His time was up.
It is just a shame it had to end like this.