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.
 
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