He didnt provide many options for the midfield - he was far to static. Not his fault - hes just not cut out to play the front man in a 433/451.
Dimitar Berbatov | 2009/10 Performances
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I think Berbatov is fine up top away from home but I think at home he needs a proper partner and Kiko could be that man. I'm glad we've two away games coming up. I think that's a plus for us without Rooney
At home, if teams sit back Berbatov drops deep to get on the ball/space and becomes so reliant on whos behind him if he has no one to play off. He was shite against chelsea but so was everyone. He still had the opportunities, he just didn't take them which is disappointing
Just to add for me Berbatov will only be shown to be worth the money the day he hangs up his boots. Rooney I never personally got that feeling because of his age and the fact he always got into double figures and his work rate. Berbatov is just someone we have to 'live' with and hopefully he scores the winner in a massive game down the line. He's good enough to.
At home, if teams sit back Berbatov drops deep to get on the ball/space and becomes so reliant on whos behind him if he has no one to play off. He was shite against chelsea but so was everyone. He still had the opportunities, he just didn't take them which is disappointing
Just to add for me Berbatov will only be shown to be worth the money the day he hangs up his boots. Rooney I never personally got that feeling because of his age and the fact he always got into double figures and his work rate. Berbatov is just someone we have to 'live' with and hopefully he scores the winner in a massive game down the line. He's good enough to.
Too true.
But when it happens with Berba in the team it's ''his fault'' and it's him ''who is not providing options for our midfield''.
More of your selective reading. Where has anyone said that the loss against Chelsea was his fault?
You're quite the drama queen re Berbatov aren't you?
We set up to get a draw on Saturday.
What dissapointed me most was that Fergie didnt change it earlier. He had Kiko and Nani warming up from half time. We created feck all in the first half - that would have told me that a change was needed.
One part of what you say is right - the first part. But then you go on to say that he's not cut out to play a front man role by which I feel you excuse his being static. Surely he's in peak condition and with a little motivation he could run his arse off chasing down the defenders trying to exert a bit of pressure or making the runs into the box that never happen, or are we saying it's ok that he doesn't do that? I remember clearly one moment when Fletcher was chasing down Terry & co on their own 18 yard line whilst Berbatov was chilling on the halfway line. What the feck?
Dimitar, if you are reading this, put in some fecking effort lest you be remembered as nothing more than another Gary Birtles, Massimo Taibi etc etc
Berbs seems to get frustrated a little too easily. You can see it in his body language. I worry that he came to United thinking that being surrounded by all these great players would make everything come easy and now he's struggling with the notion of working even harder than he did at Spurs and Bayer.
Am sure he is concerned about what you think of him. He was anything but, lazy in the game on Saturday but, if that's what you are going to hang your hat on ...
You first.
He was shite because of how shit our midfield was all game. The same type of midfield that were so shit against Bayern that Rooney was totally isolated
Berbatov isn't lazy. No matter how badly some of you wish it to be true. Some of you just have this inane idea that a person like him is lazy just because he isn't very mobile.
The only thing that will matter is what SAF thinks of him. Not the bullshit most have posted in this thread.
i think it is our midfield which is the source of problems. strikers need some service-imo the Chelsea game wouldn't have been much different if Rooney had played. that's why i think criticising Berbatov had more much sense when our midfield played better.
Spare me your patronizing airs.
Go through the thread properly. There people on here claiming he gave no options to our midfield vs Chelsea. A midfield that spent the entire game not playing to any of his strengths and giving him next to zero support. In their eyes its his fault we created feck all all game. It had nothing to do with our suddenly off colour midfield. That's been AWOL since the Bolton game.
If that isn't blaming him for the defeat, I don't know what else is.
You might want to check out a replay of the United/Chelsea match for a start.
In the first half we had just 14 attempts at getting the ball into the penalty area. Granted most of them were poor attempts, but for 13 of those Berba was in the box, usually smack bang in the middle. The only time he wasn't in the box was when he picked the ball up himself from a long ball on the left (there was no-one on the wing, Park was more central) but after he beat the last defender there was no-one else in the box to receive the cross he put in. We only had one corner during this period.
Do you now see why a lot of posts in this thread and others criticising Berba don't make any sense. There is a fairly good case for saying that it looks as if some of you don't even watch the matches at all.
Really good point Dwayne
exactly, that's why if one wants to be fair to the lad one needs to suspend criticizing Berbatov after that one game. Fltecher, Scholes, Giggs, Park, Valencia deserve more stick.
Spot on.
I still think there's more to Berba than what we seem to be getting
just don't understand why he's so disenchanted
just don't understand why he's so disenchanted
Indeed. It's funny how its considered Berbatov's fault that our midfield reproduced almost the same football they did vs Bayern.
Because he is a lazy shite who doesn't trouble top centre backs.
What we doing with such spazzes in the mains. How come they weren't filtered and discarded earlier.
I don't think singling Berbatov out for Saturday is fair, because he had little to work with, and to a man everyone was off their game
That said, I don't think he offers enough. His movement isn't clever enough against a good side, there's never a real injection of pace, while some of his control and flicks are very impressive... it's bits and bobs here and there. And it's usually slooooow as feck. I know he can do much more than he has to date at United, because I've seen him to it elsewhere. At Spurs he used to drive onto the ball and really put the defence under pressure, and then produce his skill and nous to more devastating effect. I'm at a loss why he's not been able to build on that here, never mind sustain that previous level
Valid points.
He's somewhat regressed from his spurs days instead of progressing or even maintaining the same level given he has a better team around him which just makes it all the more puzzling.
Let's all wank ourselves silly over mediocrity.
Nice that you saw that. Now watch the game again and count the number of times that he makes no effort at all to get into the box, the front fecking line even, and lead the line offering our midfield a target.
Get over yourself. Again, and I might have to spell this out for you but for now I'll do caps:
NOBODY IS BLAMING HIM FOR THE LOSS, MERELY CRITICIZING HIS CONTRIBUTION.
fecks sake. Read the fecking posts for a change instead launching into your usual shite.
wow
Have you also failed to notice when the thread was started?
Sounds like some are far too busy wanking themselves silly anyway. Must be why they can't see too well.
Im saying he is not that kind of player. He hasnt got the engine of a player like Drogba or Rooney who can battle it out uptop on his own.
Rooney against Liverpool the other week gave a brilliant display of how to play the lone striker role. Berbatovs just not cut out for that.
Doenst mean that he is bad player though.
Rooneys been isolated in plenty of big games v top opposition and looked pretty poor(though he does pull something out of the hat)... so to expect Berba to pull miracles out of the hat v Chelsea with that level of support behind him was always going to be unrealistic.
We need to support him with high energy players, who when he gets the ball go beyond him and attack space.. this is the way to get the best out of him v Bayern.
We need to support him with high energy players, who when he gets the ball go beyond him and attack space.. this is the way to get the best out of him v Bayern.
He did used to have the drive.
I saw him live at the Valley in 2007 playing for Spurs when he scored this goal.....
I agree with that.
Rooney can work something out of nothing with his pace and workrate. You wont see that from Berbatov.
As you say, Barbatov needs players around him. The only player that was up with him on Saturday was Valencia, though he was stuck to the right flank. Nani should have played.
And I'd agree with that, but that says very clearly to me that he's not a United player, would you agree with that?
What is a United player?
Cantona, Hughes, McClair, Jordan and Rooney all spring to mind. Berbatov doesn't fit in for me. At all.
Our midfield selection will also be key... do we go with Carrick-Fletch and Park as the link man? or do we stick in Macheda, play Berba deeper and risk the chance of getting overrun in midfield.
I'd love to see the latter option work, its more attacking and it would great to see Berba in his element.. running a game and drifting into space utilising his vision, he'd also be expected to put a defensive shift in to, in terms of keeping the shape in midfield.
The safe option is the first one and I hope its enough to deal with Bayern, especially seeing as we are at home.
i know where are you coming from and I'd agree with you. he was part of the team that lost a very important game for us but some folks here decided that it was his fault and his fault only.
Im not a fan of him but i wouldn't put much blame on him even if i was paid for doing so.
If we're going to get overrun by Bayern's midfield 2 at home, then I guess we should phone Spurs and see if they want some of our midfielders. Because they clearly arent good enough for us.
If we were talking a combination of Essien and Xavi then fair enough, we cant have our duo best a special partnership everytime. But our midfielders need to be at a level where we can depend on them putting in a good shift against an opponent's 2 in the middle.
Bayern's midfield isnt that good. Hopefully the only reason it looked good against us away from home was because we played a 3, and we looked confused with how it was set up. If we went back to the bread and butter 2 in the middle and were overrun by a fairly ordinary central midfield, that tells us that our options are nowhere near good enough.
I don't think a single person blamed just Berbatov for the defeat. There just happened to be a couple of Berbatov threads already on the first page (one comparing him to Cantona!!) the day of the match and he missed a big chance at the end, hes obviously going to get some stick but he hardly got the blame entirely for the defeat.
I dont want to see Park in the hole thats for sure. I think he is useless in there. Park is good when he has a task to do - like marking Pirlo against Milan or stoping Philip Lamb getting at us. I think his performance against Liverpool was vastly over hyped.
I didnt think we were over run against Bayern. We just sat far too deep at let Bayern come right at us. When we had the ball, we were so deep and compact that we didnt gave ourselves any space to work in. Our midfield 3 were playing ontop of each other. We kept giving away the ball in our own half.
Its a tough call - personally i would rather see us play a 442 with Kiko but Fergie will go for a 433.
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