Berbatov's Appreciation Thread

I love Berbatov, but listening to his interviews since he’s retired including this one with Rio, it was a mistake signing him. His view on how football should be played and how he wants to play as an individual went against everything we stood for. It’s no wonder he turned down Juventus and went to Fulham after us because he could be the big fish in a small pond and get to do things his way.
 
DarkLord1984 said:
Yeah I never understood that either. That front 3 of Rooney - Ronaldo - Tevez was damn nearly unstoppable.
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Apparently Tevez was an absolutely sh*t trainer and generally just a bit of a knob off the pitch, which was proved later with his antics at City.

However, as wonderful as Berba was, he was the wrong signing. That Rooney-Tevez-Ronaldo trio was full of pace and running, which for all his wonderful technique, was not Berba.
 
BarstoolProphet said:
One of my favourite players of all time, despite him not being one of our best players of all time. He was being compared to the workhorses Rooney and Tévez, which made him look worse than he was.
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I like him and I liked him when he was playing but he wasn't half the player either of those were.
 
If he'd been consitently good he'd be an all time United great. Still a legend to a certain extend but he's always went through purple patches more often than not and would be frustrating the other times
 
I miss footballers like him. Like, OK, I get that sports evolve and football is no different, but please let me have more magicians on the field, not people who are just running at breakneck speed with the ball. I loved him, Ibrahimovic and the likes because they could make you stand up at 5000 miles away with "How did he score that?" or "How did he stop that?", etc. etc.
 
Sorry, not read any of the posts, but my best memory of Berbatov was his amazing first touch.

Since football has been widely televised Berba, Becks and Luke Shaw have the best first touch of any Utd players in my opinion.

I was also lucky enough to see Berba score 5 in one match at Old Trafford.
 
The Brown Bull said:
I like him and I liked him when he was playing but he wasn't half the player either of those were.
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For Rooney I agree.
But Tevez? C'mon. A pace and power shot merchant, nowhere near the footballing brain and sophistication of Berbatov.

Also, everyone seems to forget we offered him a 5 year deal, which he rejected to go play for City. So yeah, feck Tevez.
 
Always thought he was signed a year too early. Trying to shoehorn him into that attack was a mistake. Similar to Liverpool now.

If he's signed in the summer of 2009, he becomes the symbol of the post Ronaldo/Tevez United as opposed to Owen/Obertan.
 
Toshey said:
For Rooney I agree.
But Tevez? C'mon. A pace and power shot merchant, nowhere near the footballing brain and sophistication of Berbatov.

Also, everyone seems to forget we offered him a 5 year deal, which he rejected to go play for City. So yeah, feck Tevez.
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It was his workrate I had in mind.Tevez always put a shift in for the team.Not sure you could say the same for Berba.
 
It was a Ferguson ego signing. He loved buying the best striker from a smaller Prem club after a league win just to flex. Overrated 100%.
 
PeteManic said:
It was a Ferguson ego signing. He loved buying the best striker from a smaller Prem club after a league win just to flex. Overrated 100%.
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Fergie seemed to make these signings every now and again of slower, highly technical, more cultured forward players but they never really worked. Berbatov, Veron, Kagawa spring to mind.

His greatest skill was adaptability, and I think they were all attempts to reinvent the side that didn’t come off. Ultimately, our best teams under him played with pace; was always more akin to Klopp’s football than Pep’s.
 
Had his moments of course, he was a very talented footballer. He was a poor fit for us though.
 
PeteManic said:
It was a Ferguson ego signing. He loved buying the best striker from a smaller Prem club after a league win just to flex. Overrated 100%.
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Fergie just LOVED strikers. He would've never waited till his strikers faltered away before signing new ones.
 
PeteManic said:
It was a Ferguson ego signing. He loved buying the best striker from a smaller Prem club after a league win just to flex. Overrated 100%.
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It was 100% the right call to bring in another top striker. Our backups that season were Saha, Solskjær, and a young Welbeck - not exactly reliable options if you’re trying to win everything.

There’s a lot of revisionism about the Rooney & Tevez partnership these days. They were great for the team, but they weren’t the unstoppable duo people make them out to be. They were too similar, and once Ronaldo left, it was clear that setup wasn’t going to work long-term.

People forget that our football back then was actually pretty cagey and defensive. We grinded out wins more than we dominated games, and honestly, we were a bit boring to watch compared to the seasons before. I remember the general vibe at the time was that we really needed a proper out-and-out striker.

Berba turned out to be a worse fit than Tevez, but that doesn’t change the fact that signing another top striker made total sense. We were close to getting Benzema back then but he chose Real over us.
 
Didn't really like the way Ferguson treated him in his final season tbh. He was absolutely fantastic in the 2010/11 season and seemed to be very upset when Ferguson dropped him for the CL final. I get the impression whatever way Berba reacted to the news, the relationship was never the same after.

Even in his final season he ended up with 7 PL goals in just 521 mins (12 appearances, 5 starts). For context that's 1.21 goals per 90 compared with Rooney's best ever goalscoring season that same year where he had 0.86 goals per 90. Scored 15 goals for Fulham the following season too so definitely still had the ability to contribute.

Always loved watching him. His first touch and moments of skill were just incredible. His overhead kick goal against Liverpool is still the most impressive goal I've ever seen, way more impressive than Rooney's overhead kick against City that same season imo. His 5 goals against Blackburn were just outrageous, including one where he started the whole move in our 3rd and end up finishing it off beautifully. His amazing dribble and assist for Ronaldo against West Ham in 2008/09. So many fantastic moments.
 
Aguero, Benzema, Torres, Eto'o, Zlatan were all big strikers who were around at that time

Every single one of them would have been better choices than Berbatov
 
MiceOnMeth said:
Aguero, Benzema, Torres, Eto'o, Zlatan were all big strikers who were around at that time

Every single one of them would have been better choices than Berbatov
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Zlatan is up there with bale for me as the most United type player that didn’t play on their prime or at all for us. He’d have been phenomenal.
 
Nostalgia is great but he wasn’t always the most popular player on the Caf. I remember he was even labelled Lazytov at one point. Still i was glad to see him in a United shirt though I think he was twice better for Spurs than he was for us
 
Berba lost Fergie's trust because Sir Alex didn't think Berbatov stepped up to compensate for Rooney getting injured at the back end of 2009/10. I think there was a 0-0 at Ewood Park where Berba could have got us the crucial 3 points.

I think dropping him from the squad for the CL Final in 2011 was way too harsh. But, I do think Fergie wanted more from Berba and didn't quite know how to extract it from him. He didn't quite make the step up to being a United player even if he had his moments.
 
Gazza said:
Berba lost Fergie's trust because Sir Alex didn't think Berbatov stepped up to compensate for Rooney getting injured at the back end of 2009/10. I think there was a 0-0 at Ewood Park where Berba could have got us the crucial 3 points.

I think dropping him from the squad for the CL Final in 2011 was way too harsh. But, I do think Fergie wanted more from Berba and didn't quite know how to extract it from him. He didn't quite make the step up to being a United player even if he had his moments.
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I mean he was the joint top scorer in the entire league in the 2010/11 season. Even if he didn't perform as expected in his first 2 seasons, I think it's quite harsh to say he didn't make the step up to being a United player given his performances that season. He was massively important in us winning the league that season. RVP arguably only had 1 truly great season with us but I doubt people would say he didn't make the step up to being a United player
 
Dazzmondo said:
I mean he was the joint top scorer in the entire league in the 2010/11 season. Even if he didn't perform as expected in his first 2 seasons, I think it's quite harsh to say he didn't make the step up to being a United player given his performances that season. He was massively important in us winning the league that season. RVP arguably only had 1 truly great season with us but I doubt people would say he didn't make the step up to being a United player
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I respectfully disagree!

He was the top scorer because he scored hat tricks in three games, two of which we would have won anyway. He scored something like 11 goals in three games. Which is great, but that doesn't give him a pass for the vast majority of his time here where he didn't produce his best and yes, he did not step up to being a United player (in the manner he was expected to when we signed him). Otherwise Fergie wouldn't have moved on to other striking partnerships so quickly.

To compare Berba's impact in 2010/11 to RVP's first season is a real stretch.
 
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Dazzmondo said:
I mean he was the joint top scorer in the entire league in the 2010/11 season. Even if he didn't perform as expected in his first 2 seasons, I think it's quite harsh to say he didn't make the step up to being a United player given his performances that season. He was massively important in us winning the league that season. RVP arguably only had 1 truly great season with us but I doubt people would say he didn't make the step up to being a United player
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He also got benched in the run in of the 10/11 season and wasn't in the squad for the CL final. It was a weird season.
 
As much as I appreciate Berbatov, was never much of a fan of his while he was here. Thought it was a poor signing at the time and was the start to pushing out Tevez who was much better for us in balance with Rooney and Ronaldo. He was more frustrating than anything in a United shirt, and while the talent is obvious, I also always felt it was clear that he wasn't ever quite good enough for Fergie's United. Those were the standards back then though where we were the best in the league and consistently one of the top 4 clubs in Europe.
 
Like others have mentioned, Berba was an immensely talented but frustrating player during his time here.

The 2010-11 season sums him up in a nutshell. On paper, you'd think he had a legendary season. Golden boot winner. A five-goal game. Hat-trick against Liverpool. Silky touches and skills. Multiple volleys and bicycle kicks to keep YouTube compilation makers busy.

Yet, by the end of the season, he arguably wasn't even among our top five or six most important players - Rooney, Nani, Chicharito, Vidic, Giggs, VDS and Valencia all were more decisive IMO.

He scored 21 goals, out of which 11 came from just three games; don't get me wrong, the hat-trick against Liverpool will always be held in high regard. He had the perfect opportunity and platform to show he could step out of Rooney's shadow and be THE man for United, but he never really lived up to that tag.

Truth be told, by as early as March 2011, both his form as well as scoring touch had fallen off a cliff. He was a complete non-entity in several games. It spoke volumes that someone like Hernandez, who by all accounts isn't even half the footballer that Berba is (at least skills-wise), managed to oust him out of the starting XI and strike up a deadly partnership with Rooney.

The lowest point wasn't his omission from the UCL final, but his performance in the Cup semi against City, where Berba missed about three golden chances to put us ahead. Rooney had been unfairly suspended for the game, and Berba had one last chance to shine, to show everyone he could produce regularly in the big games. But he completely bottled it as usual, and had the audacity to joke in our season review later that he decided to just "throw City a bone" cause they hadn't won a trophy in decades....

Still riles me up a lot more than it probably should
 
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