We talk about having players with a lack of pace - Hill, Derry, Nelsen etc. but Dimitar Berbatov seems to get the job done playing at a stroll - commentator mentioned how WBA players seem afraid to confront him on the ball and suggested he should have been man marked. Only 500 Fulham fans made the trip up.
Berbatov is very astute at finding space, he seems to have an instinctive way of ghosting into good positions. Many call him lazy but his record shows he makes up for it with goals...
Reading, Wigan, Southampton and Villa are the only ones we can catch imo............highly unlikely I realise!!
Like Rooney, Berbatov seems to have matured into a playmaker, in addition to goal scorer. In attack he pulled all the strings for Fulham in this game, and at a snails pace - compared to us with our players frantically running around like chickens with their heads chopped off.
He's a player with supreme confidence in his own ability and it shows, another one we could have got if Hughes was awake...
How many on here said Berbatov was not what we needed when mentioned in close season ( I think lazy and old were a couple if words used) ? A fair few if my memory serves my correctly.
When you have his talent and positional perception you don't need work rate. Taarabt could do worse than study the way Berbatov uses the ball and reads the game, he'd be twice the player if he played the ball with more speed rather than the obligatory step-overs...
Berbatov over Cisse anyday, Berbatov looks like he doing nothing but is, where as cisse looks like and does nothing, Berbatov will work for the ball Cisse expects it on a plate 6yds from goal and with the quality of our crosses that aint gonna happen.
At least 1-1 now, Reading is the last team we want to run away from us - we need all the company we can get down there in the depths.
So once again another 3/5 crap shoot for the relegation spots - last season it was Wolves, Blackburn, Bolton, Wigan and us, and despite our 5 home wins on the trot we really got lucky on the last day. Wigan seem to be habitual relegation escape artists but Villa are obviously much weaker with their young players this time round.
If Arry can get rid of the overpaid, underperforming players and get people in that want to play for the shirt we could still stay up. I still believe we will stay up..(and yes I am sober and wasn't drinking last night)