₦airaland Forum

debosky: Hehehe. . . . so the game in which United played 'well' was the one in which they lost, not the one they won with Rooney's contribution.

yes, you can play well & lose - it happens. in case you didn't know, we played at anfield. united created 10 scoring attempts, 4 on target, 2 off & 4 were blocked.

we were beaten via sturridge's flick of the head. after that goal, de gea was rarely tested. in the capital one game at anfield, liverpool lost cos they failed to finish off their chances. we didn't win the game at a canter, it was largely heart-attack football & we scored via a setpiece(as usual).

StarBoard: The last I checked, it is the no. 10 who should be orchestrating the attacks.
That United stopped that trend doesn't mean it should be that way otherwise.

don't mind that nkwobi-headed monster called debosky. as if it's not rooney that continues to loft those long balls to the flanks instead of feeding his centre forward. when scholes was doing those diagonal balls, he was a midfield-2, not an interiore

Rooney should be blamed if as no 10, United cannot boast of a goal from open play since the opening day of the league.

if we compare all the trequartistas in the top six, rooney is the worst but he covers this poor display with goals from set plays & he's hailed as united's best player. if rooney isn't the one tasked to take the set-plays, what would his statistics look like?

debosky: So where was Rooney playing when you played well against Liverpool?

rooney didn't play against liverpool @ anfield. i was talking about the game @ anfield, not the one at OT!!!

we played well against liverpool, even better than last season when we won there. we lost via a dodgy corner kick & liverpool defended their lead.

Fussbot: mtscheew,so kagawa should play behind d striker so he can easily loose the ball and not even drawback to defend?

when was the last time rooney tracked back to recover the ball? he was useless against busquets. fergie preferred welbeck to him against madrid & it was clear fergie had made up his mind rooney isn't suited for that role.

U lot dont even appreciate rooney...rooney drawsback to collect the ball bcus we dont have a midfielder dat can link our defence with attack,so while trying to do dis it seems he is neglecting his work as an attacker...get a yaya toure/modric behind rooney and see if he is gifted as a 10 or not...

we have 2 defensive midfielders in carrick & fellaini. if it makes it more convenient, let evra and rafael step up and create a 4-man wall in the midfield ahead of the centre halves. 6 players should be good enough to protect de gea. rooney needs to stay closer to RVP/hernandez instead of roaming around our box doing nothing.

dademola: i tot d issue is about us not scoring from open play. Rvp partnered rooney upfront in d game against crystal palace, and evra also played. Y didnt evra provide dos delicious crosses?

evra created 2 good chances against palace in the 6-yard box. you said rooney partnered RVP in the game against crystal palace but rooney isn't welbeck..... the only thing rooney has over welbeck is scoring prowess, welbeck's link up play is infinitely better than rooney's.

Against liverpool, didnt rvp start? Didnt evra play? Or are u telling me our problems started in d last 2 games?

yes it did....
we played well against liverpool, even better than last season when we won there. we lost via a dodgy corner kick & liverpool defended their lead.

in the last 2 games, we have conceded 6 goals and our team was ripped apart plus we didn't even offer much going forward. i will try & find gary neville's stats of our display in the 2nd half against west brom so you can see for yourself.

debosky: Lampard isn't a 10, so that's the wrong comparison. A better one would be Joe Cole, who did play wide, or even Oscar who can play centrally and wide as well.

what is lampard if he's not a 10? are you kidding me? when jose had makelele & essien doing the hatchet job for chelsea, who was that man in the hole treading eye of the needle passes to drogba? why wasn't he played as a winger then?

All midfielders at Arsenal play wide at some point or the other - Fabregas did, Ramsey did, Wilshere did/does, Cazorla did/does, Ozil does.

you can have them playing wide if there's an equally gifted player good enough to play in the hole and not put a clog in the creativity in the final third. united do not have such options in their squad.

kagawa was a trequartista in all his 2 seasons at dortmund - we bought him because of what he achieved at dortmund and thus we must play him where he did the damage for dortmund.

Is the lack of effectiveness due to Rooney's deficiencies or the forwards? That is the question to ask. Last time I checked, not only the 10 determines whether goals are scored.

with 4 through-passes in 390 league minutes, on whose doorstep would you put the blame? van persie or hernandez?

dademola: we havnt scored frm open play ever since we beat swansea 1-4. On dt dai, welbeck played in d hole behind rvp and we won! Y arent u pple clamouring for welbeck to get d "hole" spot den?

the difference is van persie started in that game. the last 2 league games we have lost, RVP did not start.

against swansea, evra provided delicious crosses. we took our chances when it mattered the most and welbeck made telling contributions by scoring and recovering the ball when we lost possession.

rooney isn't doing anything defensively & his offensive contribution is too light. we always have to wait for a corner or freekick to score goals and yet the man(shinji) with the masterkey that unlock defences has only played 45 mins out of 540 league minutes.

we deserve the misery we are getting....

dademola: u may hav some valid points, buh we all knw rooney has neva been d "throughball specialist". Castigating him for this, just because our wingers and fowards are in poor form, is just unfair.

if rooney isn't a through-ball specialist, what in the name of zeus is he doing in the hole?

dademola: wayne rooney isnt, and wld neva be a trequartista. R u telling me dt david silva only functions well as an inverted winger wen aguero plays?

city have always had technically gifted players. in the absence of aguero, there's tevez & nasri to fill in the gap. they are better at passing in the final third than rooney can ever be.

Or are u telling me dt wen carzola was putting up decent performances as an inverted winger last season, ozil was an arsenal player?

before ozil arrived, arsenal had wilshere & rosicky. they might not have the goal scoring prowess of wayne rooney but they move the ball better than any team in the premier league. wenger's team can never be criticised for not having good passers of the ball.

Wot of mata? Didnt ozil function well on d wing for madrid in certain games?(even in a classico sef). Stop blaming rooney!! Rather,tell kagawa to improve! Simple!

mata has oscar & hazard. highly technical players abound at chelsea. we even blame them for having too many of them. united do not have too many so it's not even logical to be playing the most gifted trequartista we have got out of position to accommodate rooney.

dademola: wot we r saying is dt; in modern day football, as a trequartista, u cant say u r only stereotyped to play in d hole, and nowhere else! Ofcourse playrs hav der prefered positions, bt if u look around, d matas, iniestas, carzolas and silvas hav all done decent jobs as inverted wingers.

when mata, iniesta, cazorla & silva are doing jobs as an inverted wingers, there's an equally productive player doing a good job as the trequartista. iniesta has xavi, cazorla has ozil, silva has aguero. united have rooney but his pass accuracy is 74%.

74%??

dademola: is it rooney's fault dt our wingers are in poor form? Over d years,We all knw our wingers play a major role in our attacks.over these years, rooney has excelled in d postion as a 2nd striker, doing wat he knws hw to do best. So because our wingers are now in a horribly poor form, u den decide to lay d blame at rooney's doorstep for not supplying "though passes" to d strikers. Nawa for u oo.

that's exactly the point....
if the wingers are poor, why is rooney still adamant to spread the play to the flanks? shouldn't rooney be looking at creating chances through the middle?

rooney can't pass or dribble. his intelligence in the final third is nothing to write home about. nani played rooney in with a fantastic pass against west brom.....instead of rooney to waltz in & shoot, he was still looking to pass to a player outside the box.

rooney's 1-2 ball is the worst in the whole northern hemisphere. he only completes 2% of his 1-2 passes. if rooney wasn't born in this country, he would have been sold aeons ago. fergie knew rooney is limited as an interiore and that was why he got kagawa.

moyes, the media and the fact that it's a world cup year is the reason rooney won't be dropped anytime soon but the fans who don't know are using his stats to back him up.

as long as rooney scores a hatrick every game, it does not matter even if the team as a whole concedes 6 goals each in those games. if rooney's stats are not winning matches for us, then his stats are meaningless.

debosky: So now we're judging based on youtube clips? Really? From season before last no less?

what else should we use to convince you? stats are meaningless to you & video clips are also meaningless? why did united sign kagawa anyways? because a fairy came down to convince fergie?

If Kagawa is a luxury player that can only function if played centrally, then he isn't really ready for the EPL. There are virtually no players that enjoy that luxury these days.

looking at his ability alone, the team should be built around him. he's one of the most gifted players in that role. he even did a better job in that role than özil at dortmund. kagawa was the reason dortmund won 2 championships on a spin.

I'm not saying he shouldn't be played centrally, but he has to adapt and be able to perform elsewhere.

what does a gooner know about intelligent players? there's a reason you guys have not won a pin in almost a decade. why should kagawa adapt elsewhere - why not put xavi on the left flank and ask him to adapt!!!

Rooney can't be benched for Kagawa at the moment, he appears to be the only player working hard and delivering in the final third so Moyes who is on shaky ground might be committing suicide if it backfires.

what has rooney delivered in the final third? a player has made just 4 through-passes in 5 games and you give him credits for working hard....are you kidding me? ozil had as many as that in the first half of his debut game for arsenal.

That's why he should've played Rooney at CF and Kagawa in the 10 position at home against West Brom.

rooney can't lead a strike force and unfortunately, we now have a better player that can play in the hole than rooney. if rooney isn't english, he won't be anywhere near the first team.

does rooney even stay in the box? he would go deep to fetch the ball thus isolating his front man. when he plays as a CF, he's not in the box when the wingers put in delicious crosses begging to be hit.

debosky: Word. . . .even Ozil was shifted wide in Arsenal's game yesterday, and he delivered. In the current EPL squads if you want to feature you have to be highly adaptable - only complete specialists like CFs or GKs can hold on stringently to just one role - even GKs are being turned into sweepers or distributors in addition to their primary roles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dg3Kdh_rtI

watch this clip & tell me why kagawa should be the one making way for rooney? if rooney was doing a good job in the hole then I can understand - but he's not delivering playing in the hole.

ozil was played wide cos he can do a job there without necessarily dumbing down arsenal's quality in the final third. we have a gifted player such as kagawa & a fat scouser won't even let him get a decent run of games where he's most effective....

ridiculous!!!

montelik: the lack of through passes is not the most troubling stat. there have to be good runs and space to play the ball through anyway. the worrying thing is the large amount of longballs. what that shows is that Rooney is not able to receive, retain and pass the ball higher up the pitch. so he is coming deeper, and not only that but for all his vaunted pace and power rather than carry the ball forward and run at the opposition or interchange passes to open up spaces. he instead elects to punt the ball long to either an isolated forward or our terrible wingers.

we need someone in the hole who can remain relatively higher up the pitch for most of the game and be effective. if rvp isn't it fully ready, put Rooney up top afterall he is consistently hitting the bacj of the net. then play kagawa or welbeck behind him.

hitting the back of the net consistently from set plays is different from hitting it from open play. put rooney up top & you have just compounded the problem. does rooney even stay in the box? he's out there playing tip-tap with carrick & cleverley.

debosky: ^^ Or maybe the forwards just aren't making the runs into the right positions?

all of a sudden, hernandez that doesn't stop running isn't making the runs into the right position. do you even watch united games at all?

or do you expect Rooney to be playing through passes into areas strikers aren't making runs into?

hernandez is the most mobile player in the premier league. rooney is the culprit. he's a number 10 & yet he doesn't have the skill to take on his markers & shake them off. his tactic is to drop deep near carrick, receive the ball and lay it to the flanks. the wingers are having an iffy form, we must try other routes to attack opponents. the wing route isn't working & rooney isn't good enough in that role.

That's where statistics can give a wrong impression - you need to observe where Rooney is where he receives the ball and where strikers are before you can say he's making the right/wrong number of through passes.

it's too early to start going to opta - i thought 34 long passes & a miserable 4 through passes from a trequartista is a disgrace. özil had as many as that number of through passes on his debut alone.

Why is Moyes reluctant to play Rooney at CF and put Kagawa in the hole behind him? I'm sure Rooney would've done much better at CF that what we saw from little pea on Saturday.

rooney at CF is not clinical enough - who would trust rooney to lead a strike force? he's bereft of intelligence to even operate effectively in that role. rooney attempts shots on target when it's clear there are defenders throwing legs & backsides to block the shots!

the intelligence to dummy a shot is beyond rooney.

dademola: So rooney is being blamed for d team's lack of creativity cos he plays in d hole despite d fact dt on dis same thread, we all complain about our virtually non-existent wing play/ poor form of our wingers. Nawa o

the way you argue backwards amazes me. the lack of creativity can be blamed on rooney.

when rooney gets the ball, he plays a crossfield pass to the flanks where we all know our wingers are having a poor form lately. the crosses have been horrible & when they manage to put in a decent cross, there's no striker there to connect with the ball. we have only been attacking teams via one route & that's not good enough. this is why scoring from open play in the league evades us.


how come rooney can't play through the middle for once? 34 long passes and only 4 through passes suggest rooney is not suited to play in the hole. the reverse should be the case, it should be 34 through passes & 4 long balls. only carrick & fellaini and perhaps de gea should be playing long passes as many as rooney has done in his last 5 games.

SailorXY: Hmm I think you made a valid observation here, especially the width thing having Kagawa on the wings with great tendency to drift inward.
However, do you think playing Rooney on the wings won't have same effects? I hope Moyes gives it a trial cuz Rooney is dynamic enough & keeping him on the bench is something that is not plausible for now, our out & out wingers are offering very little going forward

compare the intensity in the swansea game with what we are serving recently. rooney can't operate between the lines, he's technically deficient to function there. kagawa has the eye for a pass, he can keep the ball & he's got more intelligence in his left toe than wayne rooney can ever be.

[quote author=Mr_TA]Here's hoping for more success in October. [/quote]unless rooney breaks his metatarsal.....it's a pipe dream to think we can be successful with this side.

StarBoard: He cannot sacrifice Rooney for the good of the team and is already dancing to his tune and courting his attention by making him captain unnecessarily. A$$ kissing so early in the season to an over-rated player.
Instead he's shafting Kagawa to the left when its obvious we won't get he best out of him from that position. Rooney who could be suited to playing there cannot be talked into it because he (Moyes) has no spine.
Sigh

this bit is the reason we won't be scoring in a while. rooney is not as technically gifted as kagawa to play in the hole. one could argue kagawa isn't as strong as rooney to track back & make recoveries but rooney has not been doing that this season either....

moyes has no spinal cord to put rooney on the bench or play him on the flank & let kagawa float in the hole. the creativity from open play is suffering & it's eroding the confidence of the fans. kagawa playing from the left denies us width from the left channel & in the absence of evra, the defeat was inevitable.

afrodoc: yet you the master of stats has not been able to show stats to back up your claim.
u mentioned ronaldo and messi and RVP

i showed you 29 of ronaldo's 34 league goals were scored against shyte teams. that should be an indictment against him as a flat track bully.

WELL show us with facts and figures which of them has capitalized on bottom feeder relegated teams to score 30 percent of his league goals like Berbatov?

if we break it down to facts & figures, you would lose. like i told you earlier, berbatov did not play a large chunk of the so-called big games. the accusation of him being a flat track bully is utterly misplaced....

by your logic, (chelsea + city + arsenal) were the top teams in 2010/11. berbatov started only 1 game out of the 6 league games available to him against these top teams. in raw stats, berbatov played only 128 league minutes in 540 mins against top teams in the season he was the top scorer in england.

against the bottom sides(blackpool + birmingham + west ham), berbatov started 5 out of the 6 league games available - in raw stats, dimitar copped 450 mins out of the 540 league minutes available. he scored 8 league goals against these teams but that was because he was in the starting line up 5 times against them.

my deductive reasoning tells me, for a striker to score goals in any game(tough or easy fixture), he must be played first & foremost. this is why people like you should stay away from interpreting statistics. it requires an astronomical level of intelligence quotient.

similarly, in 11/12....(city + arsenal + spurs) were the top teams in the premier league according to your logic. berbatov did not even kick a ball against any of these teams. that's 0 minutes in the 540 league minutes available. surely, only a disillusioned & a deluded fan like yourself would expect him to score like his counterparts while his bütt was planted on the bench by SAF.

The fact remains that compared to top strikers for big teams he scores a disproportionately high percentage of his goals against the yeye defences of relegation bound teams.
Thats why he is a flat track bully

the fact remains - berbatov plays an atrocious low number of minutes against top teams than his peers in the premier league. only a complete tool would then expect berbatov to match the scoring records of rooney, RVP, suarez, etc when statistics showed he copped only 128 minutes in 1080 league minutes(12% match-minute appearance) available to him against top sides in 10/11 & 11/12.

afrodoc: every season there are 19 teams to face in the league.
assuming berbatov's team always finishes in the top 4 it means he has a minimum of 3 teams that finish in the top 4 to play against.
so one assumes that if things were balanced berbatov should have scored about 3/19(15%) of his EPL goals against teams that finished in the top 4. even if its not up to 15 percent it should be somewhere close to that.

you are plumbing the depths of idiocy with this meaningless stats. i have told you already your method of choosing the top four is largely flawed. i won't even mention your ridiculous assumption that berbatov must have started all the games against your supposed top teams.

scientifically, your theory is flawed!!!

however to my dismay i found out that berbatov had scored ONLY 6 out of his 90 EPL goals against teams that finished in the top 4 giving a percentage of 6.6 percent!

when liverpool won the champions league in 04/05, they were 5th. when chelsea won the champions league in 11/12, they finished 6th. by your ridiculous insipid assumption, strikers that scored against these 2 teams in those seasons did not score against a top team.

you are arguing against logic....

the same way there are 3 relegated teams every season so one expects him to score about 3/19 or 15 percent of his goals against them. however to my dismay i found out that he had score a whooping 27 out 90 goals i.e 30 percent of his goals against teams that were relegated.

if you compute this same stat for rooney, RVP or suarez, you would find out a higher percentage of their goals came from bottom sides.

now u shot urself in the foot
he is the epitome of the flat track bully

nah, you have shot yourself in the foot - computing meaningless stats that do not have a definite top four teams. your logic fails to recognise liverpool(04/05) & chelsea(11/12) as a top team. the whole world is laughing at you....

afrodoc: which brownie points?

i no send nairaland reach that level guy.
answer this did he or did he not score almost HALF of his UEFA CUP goals against TIRASPOL of Moldova?

that's another flawed argument.
only 20% of the teams in the world are top teams. the other 80% are shyte teams. logic then dictates a striker is 4 times likelier to score against a weak team than a top team.

ronaldo scored 34 league goals last season, only 3 of them were against top sides(barcelona & athletico), he scored 2 against sociedad(another champions league representative).

in a nutshell, 29 of ronaldo's 34 league goals were scored against shyte sides. by your logic, ronaldo is a flat track bully. ronaldo scored hatricks against deportivo, getafe, sevilla. why didn't he do the same against barca or athletico?

you have shot yourself in the foot....

afrodoc: lol i knew u would resort to insults when u had nothing else to say.
enjoy

you are the one shooting yourself in the foot. berbatov scored against united in 02/03. he scored twice against madrid as far back as 04/05. there have been goals against bayern munich, dortmund, liverpool, lyon, roma, etc even before berba moved to england & you are here propagating lies to score cheap brownie points.

afrodoc: so the seasons liverpool were crappy and finished 6th i should count them as top 4?
its like someone claiming because he scored against man city in 2004 that he scored against a top team just because man city r top 4 now.

the league position of the team that season tells you about the quality of the team THAT SEASON. I am more concerned about that than traditional or cultural top 4

he scored most of his goals against teams that were relegated and very few against teams that were good enough for top 4 in those seasons

and this is the fraud you keep spreading. liverpool might finish 20th but it doesn't tell the story of how they would still mop the floor with united at anfield. united have lost more games to liverpool in the last 6 seasons than arsenal that always manage to finish in the top four.

so how can you find any logic in the argument you are putting forward? anfield is a difficult place for any man utd team. we are more likely to cop points at the etihad, emirates, white hart lane than anfield so the league position is a fraudulent way of choosing your top four.....

afrodoc: chairman is is that hard?
Man City is a top 4 team now but a few years ago they were mid-table so there is no permanent top 4 team.
u assess a team's quality in a particular season by their position at the end of the season.thats why league champions are crowned at the end of the season and teams are relegated at the end and not in december of february.

i did due diligence with my research and found that more often than not the goals berbatov scored were against teams so crappy that they ended up being relegated at the end of the season and he rarely scored goals against teams that were so good THAT SEASON that they made the top 4.
Thats why i call him a flat track bully.

i call him a stat padder because once he sees those his "abirun" teams he loads them with goals so that in years to come people will come on nairaland to defend his stats
for example berbatov has 19 goals in 23 matches in the UEFA Cup.
do u know that of his 19 goals SEVEN of them came against the "mighty" team called TIRASPOL FC of MOLDOVIA in a tie which ended 11-2?
thats why i call him a stat padder

you are a fraud......
the traditional big four have always been man utd, chelsea, arsenal & liverpool. berbatov couldn't have scored against his own team(man utd) so there has to be another team in there(perhaps spurs or man city).

berbatov scored a hatrick against liverpool at OT. that's half of the league goals you are crediting him to have scored since 06/07 against top 4 EPL sides. can't you see the flaw in your argument?

then you had the hutzpah to say he's a stat padder but records showed berbatov scored his first goal against united as far back as 02/03 while you were still in a primary school studying elementary arithmetic.

dademola: hehehehehehe! I saw dis coming, i swear. Assuming berba played in dos 2 finals, we prolly wlda won 5-0 and 7-1 like we did at oldtrafford against... Erm.. Remind me again jare

if berbatov started in those 2 finals, we would have showed more bottle than we did. rooney ruined us in those 2 finals. he was useless in 08/09 and lethargic in 10/11. SAF wasn't happy with rooney at all.

afrodoc: i showed the stats earlier and everybody saw them. this is no conjecture ,just pure facts....i know u r a fan of statistics

we are talking EPL goals remember


A MEASLY 6 EPL GOALS AGAINST TOP 4 TEAMS WHILE HE IS BUSY PADDING HIS STATS WITH GOALS AGAINST OLOBE TEAMS

at this juncture, you have to list the top 4 EPL teams in your statistics. who are the top four teams?

Ibime: Wrong! Gustavo Fring is a character in Breaking Bad, the greatest series of all time.

shyte series.....
you must not have seen strike back. watch strike back & come back and give your testimony.

dayokanu: Former WPOTY Kaka cost 65m and the same Mourinho put him on the bench for several games

How much more the 2 left legged Torres

kaka wasn't the most expensive player in real madrid. torres is the most expensive in the whole of UK. if mourinho puts torres on the bench like he did casillas or kaka, he would be sacked by christmas. roman is crazier than florentino perez.

dademola: d same berbatov dt has witnessed 2 UCL finals in manutd.. Came on as a sub in one, and in d other, D MANAGER DIDNT CONSIDER HIM GOOD ENOF TO MAKE D BENCH, DESPITE D FACT THAT HE IS STILL OUR MOST EXPENSIVE PLAYER!! SHAME ON DIMITAR BERBATOV!!

and how did we fare in those 2 finals? we opted for a headless chicken when the composure & calmness of berbatov would have helped retain the ball in the final third and deny barcelona a bit of possession to hurt us.....

you are shooting yourself in the foot!

afrodoc: we are debating berbatov 's scoring against top 4 teams in his EPL HISTORY.you even pointed to goals he scored against United,Chelsea while playing for Spurs.
he scored a penalty against Arsenal last season while playing for Fulham

he's a different animal at fulham & spurs. he's their leader in those teams. they let him do everything. at united, things were different. rooney, ronaldo, giggs, carrick, nani, etc get the first option before berbatov .

are you saying berbatov has only scored 6 goals against top teams since he moved to england in 06/07? you must be a dreamer......

afrodoc: not true.
out of his measly 6 EPL goals against top 4 teams he has at least one penalty there.
cross check ur facts

which game did berbatov take a penalty or a freekick to score in a red shirt? i can't remember any. berba has only scored 2 goals via penalty in a red shirt(stoke & wigan) and that was in 11/12 season.

before berbatov won the golden boot, he assisted 10 league goals in 08/09 & 6 league goals in 09/10. it then begs the question - why should a supposed centre forward be assisting 10 or 6 league goals from open play? who was he assisting

afrodoc: ok.
but how come 4 of his 7 seasons he ended up not scoring against the top teams? and scored only 6 GOALS against top 4 teams in his career?
then u factor him scoring goals galore every season against relegated teams and 24 GOALS in his career?

the question is not whether he has scored against United, the question is why is such a suspiciously LOW PERCENTAGE of his goals against top teams while an INORDINATELY HIGH PERCENTAGE is against crappy relegation bound teams?

this is the simplest question ever....

firstly, he rarely started those "big games". he had less minutes against big clubs than rooney or drogba.

secondly, berba never took set pieces in those big games. every goal he's scored against top teams were from open play or individual brilliance. comparing him to rooney or ronaldo is flawed in that regard.

at tottenham, he scored plenty of goals against top clubs. in 07/08, he scored against man utd, chelsea & liverpool.

at united, he wasn't even operating as a striker, the strikers had to make way for ronaldo during a united attack. his number of assists in 08/09 and 09/10 should tell you he was more of a trequartista than a fox in the box.

afrodoc: no need insult people here guy.

in case u don't understand me let me type it in capital letters

I AM ILLUSTRATING THE QUALITY OF THE TEAMS IN GENERAL AND DEFENCES IN PARTICULAR THAT BERBATOV SCORES MANY OF HIS GOALS AGAINST.

they were not dropped into relegation by tsunami or by paratroopers. they were relegated because they were crappy!
and ur bro berbatov took advantage of them and padded his stats. however when the he had to leave the flat tracks of relegation bound teams for the steep incline of top contenders he was found wanting.....time and time again.
compare 6 goals to 27 goals......no be fluke. NA HIM HANDIWORK

there's no team in the premier league berbatov hasn't scored against. he was adjudged the best forward in the league when his fellow professionals voted him into the PFA team in his debut season. how's he a flat-track bully when he scored against united even before we forked £30m to buy his brilliance.....

afrodoc: in the 2006/2007 season berbatov scored 4 goals against relegated teams

in the 2007/2008 season berbatov scored 5 goals against relegated teams

in the 2008/2009 season berbatov scored 4 goals against relegated teams

in the 2009/2010 season berbatov scored 3 goals against relegated teams

in the 2010/2011 season berbatov scored 6 goals against relegated teams

in the 2011/2012 season berbatov scored 2 goals against relegated teams

in the 2012/2013 season berbatov scored 3 goals against relegated teams

when u consider that he scored only SIX (6) goals against top 4 teams and TWENTY SEVEN (27) goals against teams that got relegated that season you would agree with me that 'o ku die kaato"

once again if this is not a flat track bully pls who is?

afrodoc, stop arguing like a child.
those teams were not in the relegation pool when berba scored against them. it was after they conceded those berba goals that they slipped into relegation.......

dademola: i agree. Bt d difference is dt, BOTH PLAYERS SPREAD DER GOALS, AND DNT CONCENTRATE DEM IN 2 MEANINGLESS 7-1, and 5-0 victories at d camp nou and bernabau against relegation threatened teams. And ofcourse, DEY SCORE IN STAR MATCHES!!

the difference is that both players are the set piece specialists for their respective teams. berba isn't!!!

in games where rooney is a fecal matter, he gets the allowance to take penalties & freekicks. take the chelsea game(3-3) as example. rooney scored 2 awoof penalties while playing rubbish all through. stats would show rooney scored in a big game and the general conception would be "he must have played well....."

messi/ronaldo must have scored up to 12 penalties alone between themselves in el-classico games. there's a reason lampard can't scorch at chelsea. when you get free passes to take setplays - the stats get skewed!