Put the Onion in the Bag!

Now I have made little secret of where I stand on the subject of Dimitar Berbatov. I have always been a big fan of his and was delighted when we signed him just over a year ago.

He has had his share of criticism since his arrival however with many people saying he wasn’t worth £30 Million and that he is “lazy” (or “languid” which seems to be the word of choice amongst most pundits).

The fact that he hasn’t exactly been setting the record books alight with his goalscoring output hasn’t helped his case much either.

I can forgive all this though because I still believe that he has many great qualities about him that put him in that upper bracket of top footballers.

However, there is one aspect of him that even I am now starting to find extremely irritating and it is … what’s the word? Childishness? Sulkiness? Stroppiness?

Basically, it is the way he throws his arms about whenever a ball isn’t played exactly where he wants it to be played.

He will rarely do it when the ball is delivered from a player like Giggs or Scholes because he knows that to criticise either of those two legends would be Manchester United Career Suicide but he doesn’t hold back whenever it is someone else and that someone else is more often than not Nani.

I have mentioned this before but it is now becoming even more obvious that Berby does not rate Nani as a footballer one little bit. I would even go so far as to say that it is now becoming personal.

Watch the game from last night again. Over and over again, Nani would play a ball to Berby who would then complain that he wanted it to feet when Nani plays it into space and complain that he wanted it into space whenever he played it to his feet.

There was even one passage of play (around the 55 minute mark) where Nani played a pass to Berby that he wasn’t happy with. Berby went into one of his little sulky rants, flinging his arms about by his sides. In the meantime, Nani had just got on with things, won the ball back and then slipped a neat little ball through for Berby to chase. Berby didn’t see it because he was having a tantrum and had turned his back on Nani. This obviously led to another tantrum… presumably because Nani had played the ball when he wasn’t ready.

There was another passage of play when Berby had the ball at his feet and was running towards the CSKA area, he looked to his left, saw Nani (who was in a perfect position to receive a ball) but deliberately turned away and looked inside for someone else to pass to.

Quite frankly, if this behaviour was seen on an Under 12s football pitch, the kid would be substituted, taken to a quiet corner and told to sort his attitude out.

If there are two people who are perhaps more under the microscope than any others this season then it is probably Nani and Berbatov.

We all want to see Nani fulfill the potential we have been seeing for the last couple of years and we all want Berby to justify the hefty price tag.

We want to see Nani be stronger, take on defenders, stay on his feet, put in quality crosses and knock in the occasional goal himself.

We want to see Berbatov score more goals. The 20-25 goals per season he was getting at Spurs should be achievable.

To his immense credit, Nani is improving. He has become stronger, he doesn’t go down half as easily as he used to do and we are certainly spared the embarrassment of seeing a grown man rolling along the ground in agony as if shot by a sniper when replays show that he was barely touched.

He works hard when he loses the ball to get it back and when he gets the ball back, he has the courage to have another go, over and over again.

He crossing is still a bit hit and miss and if he could start to get decent balls in with more consistency then he would probably increase his efficacy as a player ten-fold. Sometimes he still has a tendency to put a ball in without actually looking up first (there was a glaring example of this last night and on that occasion, it wasn’t just Berbatov who was giving him the evil eye).

But he is still only 22 (23 next month) and is definitely going in the right direction for my money.

As for Berbatov, we all know his good points. His touch, his awareness, his strength when holding up the ball, his ability to play the unexpected flick or backheel that has defenders in disarray but what we want him to do more than anything else is score goals or at least get into positions to shoot.

Last night, he had four shots, two of which were off target.

It is almost as though Berby knows the pressure he is under himself this season and so is looking at every opportunity to lay the blame for his own failings on the player who is generally perceived as one of the weakest links in the team, although he might be in for a shock as to just where he himself would stand if it came to a straight choice between himself or Nani getting the axe.

Now, I know there’s a lot more to it than this (there’s the goalkeeper for a start) but a football goal measures about 8 feet high by 24 feet wide. That is a total area of 192 square feet.

That is what you are required to hit Berby and at £30 Million, you should be capable. Just concentrate on doing that and when you can do that on a regular basis then perhaps, just perhaps, you will have earned the right to criticise one of your fellow team-mates for failing to hit a pass so that it lands on a specific blade of grass.

However, once you’re doing your own job properly, you might find that you don’t quite feel the need to blame anyone else on the pitch.