Berba need to prove his worth

Ekeke

Well now you're talking.

You're right he is making runs. I wasnt suggesting he doesnt - the newbie was. He was saying that he's playing deep because his team mates dont understand his runs and movements yet.

To put it plainly, if that were the case and he was therefore not making runs his team mates would never, ever get used to them and we'd always have this excuse.

Berbatov IS making runs and he's playing deep because he's brilliant at it, its his best role and the reason he cost us £32 million. He would not have cost that after his first season at Spurs where he played as their furthest forward attacker, scoring some nice goals but not an amazing amount and setting up several more. Back then even £20 million was sounding a little excessive.

The reason he cost a lot more this year is because he showed he's probably the best in the world as a striker in terms of creating chances for team mates, dropping deep to use his vision and passing to his full potential.

He's playing his best role and he's playing it pretty well. Sucks for him we dont have the best kind of partner for him. Someone who is going to profit from it game after game and put the ball in the back of the net.

RedPhil1957

Its not Berbatov being too lazy or deep or Ronaldo not trying or Rooney or Tevez or the midfield or Gazza being old or Rio off form or all the other rubbish reasons its simple ------------ the shots to goals ratio tells us ------------plenty of good chances too many missed in virtually every match this season.
If we improve that all will be well.

Raven Blade

I think we need to have a bit more patience with him. Its not easy to get in our first team and suddenly be 100% effective in everything he does. There is still a lot more to come from Dimitar Berbatov. There's no doubt about that. But lets look at the positives of his performances so far. He has scored a fair amount of goals for us and created chance after chance for his team mates. That proves that he is an extremely potent goal threat when he is on top of his game.

Now its obvious that he has been playing far too deep recently. He is at his most dangerous in and around the box where he can show his vision and eye for goal. I hope Fergie has a word with him and tells him to push higher up the pitch. Although we have a very fluid attack we need him to be an out and out striker and get in the box more often. I want to see him show more hunger to score goals.

GusHiddink

I was joking re veron.


Re the best front 3 in the world thats balls.

Tevez rooney ronaldo holy trinity garbage was grossly overstated...and ronaldo for want of a better word papered over the cracks in that trio at many stages of last season.

Had we the ronaldo of last season at this point in time i suspect we'd have more points. once he gets back to his best, berbatov settles we'll be just fine.

Bilbo

Highest league scorers, highest CL scorers (I think). These are difficult facts to argue against.

Of course, Ronaldo was the main player in that trio, but thats largely irrelevant, since both Rooney & Tevez weighed in with a decent number too.

Name a better frontline anywhere in the world last season?

ben_foster

absolutley bang on. going back a couple of weeks and everybody was hanging out of rooney's arse.....the reason, he'd scored a few goals against aalborg. kazachstan, belarus and west brom.

when it really matters rooney has consistantly not performed. the whole of the back end of last season. against arsenal, against chelsea and albeit out of position against liverpool

tevez on the other hand has the knack of scoring big goals, chelsea at home, anfield twice, plus away at spurs and blackburn last year.

this isnt another rooney tevex debate but i do not understand how the question about rooney's big game temprament has not being asked whilst as mentioned above foreign players are consistantly questioned despite evidence pointing to the opposite

Merman

You're talking out of your arse here. Rooney was our best attacking player versus Arsenal away and Liverpool at home last season. Check out the motm threads if you want too. As for the end of last season, he was in good form until he got injured, he was rushed back from injury and got injured again. That clearly effected his form. Rooney has always been one of our best players in big games when fit and don't try to manipulate facts to suit your argument. You need not score in a big game to perform well.

Brwned

And he scored against Chelsea.

All the while ignoring the fact that Rooney performed better than Tevez last season, and still got more stick.

Tevez doesn't get blamed more than Rooney does.

CircusMonkey

I dont Blame Berbatov, i blame SAF. He bought Berbatov when Tevez was playing out of this world.. And dropped him.
He dropped the ball. Berbatov needs time to adjust.
SAF sometimes makes strange choices, but after spending 31m maybe he felt he had to quickly put Berbatov in.
i hate the "3 man up front switching/Rooney left/right/cb/cm"thing. id like to see old 442 with a target man and rooney playing the sheringham role.
I dont know if Berbatov could play the target man tho.
Up front always looks messy, and sometimes it seems to even confuse our own players.

Merman

And Arsenal in the FA Cup and won the decisive penalty with his close control against Spurs. He fails to mention that Rooney scored against Blackburn away this season while mentioning Tevez's last season. Some people here hate English players more than they love United.

Brwned

That's never happened.

Simon Adebesi

What is your basis for claiming this? I was with you at the start of last season that the partnership (of Tevez and Rooney) didnt look ideal but most people who held that view have now accepted it was wrong. Obviously as Bilbo concedes you cant deny the influence Ronaldo had single-handedly on the team last year, but that is not evidence that Rooney and Tevez did not contribute - both in the goals they scored and in the chances they helped create for Ronaldo.

I agree with Bilbo that it was the best attacking unit anywhere last season. That is not to say it couldnt be improved - or that Berbs hasnt / wont improve on it. But for last year the facts speak for themselves.

ben_foster

you fail to see my point.......im talking about big goals. goals of importance. not the third in a 3-0. im talking about winners and equilisers when it looks like the game is gone.

and the argument of you dont have to score to play well is a bit baffling as that is what people are levelling at berbatov in this very thread.

as far as im concerned if you play up top for united your expected to score goals. if your not scoring 30 a season like ruud then you should be getting 15-20 with an equal number of assists. rooney doesnt.

my point is that apparently, according to the media and a few blinkered fans on here ronaldo and berbatov have been poor, lacking fitness, not looking interested, lack of passion whilst rooney shows all of that and is apparently on fire.........yet look at the facts regarding goals and assissts.

Merman

17 goals and 15 assists last season, 23 goals and 14 assists the season before, 18 goals and 14 assists in 2005-06

ben_foster

thats all competitions mate.

Brwned

Ruud never scored 30 goals in the league.

ben_foster

you know what im getting at.

Brwned

Yeah, bollocks.

Rooney's scored/created over 30 goals for the past three season, that's good enough for me and you're trying to take a shot at him for no good reason.

Merman

exactly

GusHiddink

Name a better front line anywhere this season.... gonna be difficult when we have the worlds best player, rooney and A N other. is my point. I could stick roque banta cruz in there and ask you to name a better trio in world football and i dont think you could.

2 points... on form alone you are correct tevez should not have been dropped if he wanted to play berbatov (when he 1st arrived) it should have been rooney. But tevez was not playing out of this world.

I never accepted i was wrong on the tevez rooney partnership and i believe time has proved me correct. You dont fork out 32mil on a striker if you believe everything is rosy in that department. If it was a case of numbers then we'd have brought in someone like roque banta cruz, an excellent player who would cost half what berbatov cost. But the point is ferguson saw, admist all our achievements that something wasnt right in terms of the balance of our striking department.

Got to the extent last season it wasnt even a partnership season but for a few games.

At one stage we had ronaldo up top, rooney left wing and i think park right wing and tevez just behind ronaldo in some sort of strange black hole.

To some extent i believe we got away with it because frankly we have the best player in the world and he was on fire.

Im not saying they didnt contribute of course they did. And we may well have been the best attacking unit in world football but i again come back to ronaldo. Last season's ronaldo would probably have at least 4 more goals by now...ridiculous thing to say i know given he's ahead of his ratio this time last year but its obvious he still isnt quite right and ive seen him miss chances in the champions league and arsenal games he'd have gobbled up on fire.

Thats enough to make a difference. More so that this nonsense about berbatov disrupting the holy trinity. Creating chances aint our problem.

Lot 49

Have to quote this in case other people read it and think they must be imagining it.

Ekeke

Messi, Eto'o, Henry.

Eto'o has 16 in 15, Messi has 10 in 13, Henry has 5 in 13

Berbatov has 5 in 13, Rooney has 5 in 15, Ronaldo has 6 in 12

CapeTownRed

That's Ronaldo 07/08 form!

Crustanoid

Did you watch them many times last season? They (along with Giggs / Nani often in a front four) obliterated defences last season in many exceptional attacking displays.

I agree Ronaldo isn't firing all that much at the moment but the Tevez - Rooney - Ronaldo combination worked brilliantly, and it wasn't all Ronaldo

jojojo

Tevez was playing better than Rooney at the start of the season, but he wasn't playing so well he made himself undroppable and he wasn't scoring.

On the "trinity" last season - Roo, Ron, Tevez started 24 (of our 55) games together. If you want to look at the changing pattern and tactics up front, the "Berbatov and Tevez" switch is not the only story.

kouroux

It's even better form

MadDogg

But there were also many other displays where we were crying out for a different type of player. We often got away with it because Ronaldo is a freak, but the need was obvious.

The only question is whether Berbatov was the right type of player. As I've said all along, I think that will depend on Rooney. If he plays the correct way and makes the right runs (as he was during October when he was on fire), then it will work brilliantly. But if he ends up dropping too deep and trying to do too much, then we would have been better off with a player like Saha/Eto'o/Adebayour. A pacy striker to play off the defenders shoulder.

Ekeke

Will also depend greatly on Rooney's finishing.

GusHiddink

Exactly. By my maths thats less than half

I know its nice to build up a mythology around this sort of tosh but the holy trinity were nowhere near as important as say yorke and cole.

Fact is Ronaldo was superhuman. Im not saying he did it all on his own but he was THE difference. Best player in the world bar none can do that.