Signing of 08/09

Considering the fee and the 4-year, £50k/week contract for an injury-prone 30 year old, it was a questionable buy even if he doesn't re-injure his knee.

 

What does that have to do with him? It might be relevant if he was a total failure but that clearly does not apply to Berbatov.

When anyone signs a player they are expected to deliver. Berbatov has delivered yet he was put above numerous expensive strikers (relative to the standing of their club) that have not. Your comment about Berbatov and Shevchenko being different players is very relevant because you directly compared their goal output when their respective roles were completely different. Berbatov was signed to be our offensive pivot while Shevchenko was signed to be one of Chelsea's primary goal scorers. The grumblings over Shevchenko were threefold and revolved around whether Chelsea needed him in the first place or not, his age (as he turned 30 at the start of his first Chelsea season and, finally, his transfer fee. That was before he had even kicked a ball. So-called fans can boo Berbatov all they want but they are merely highlighting their ignorance to his game/role and their spoilt nature.

Care to quote where I stated it was your ranking?

I fundamentally disagree that injured players should be considered above players who are fully fit and simply not performing. It is not about making excuses but looking at contributing factors instead of making simplistic decisions about a player. Transfer fee and injuries should not be given more importance than performance.

 

He was not great in his last couple of seasons at Boro, certainly not noticably better than Jones or Turnbull have been. He had been there a long time and probably gone a bit stale - a change of scenary can work for a player in that situation.
He also wanted more money and a longer contract than they were prepared to give him.

 

Worse signing of the season? Barry Ferguson - who has destroyed his Scotland future and embarrassed his club - all through being a cowardly d!ck and signing shielded V's behind his Managers back. It's not as if Scotland is overly blessed with decent players compared to past decades and this could really hurt the Scottish team.

 

I being too subtle for you. Barry Ferguson was not signed this season. He did however get in trouble for signing V's behind his managers back!

 

It depends on exactly what you mean by worst signing. Looking at transfer fees is an easy (albiet flawed) way to quantify expectation level, which I (and I believe most people) think is an important factor in judging signings. If you don't factor in expectation level, and judge purely on performance, then the worst signing will technically be some free transfer that no-one has ever heard of who was terrible in reserve games. If you use transfer fee as a proxy for expectation level, then it is equally as important as performance, as it indicates what level of performance the player should be reaching. A poor player for Man Utd may after all be a great player for West Brom.

You can certainly argue that Berbatov has been playing better than some posters are implying, but surely you must see that Berbatov's £30m fee puts much higher expectations on him than any of the other players considered. If he played at the same level as average £10m signing, that would imply that £20m has been wasted.

 

The vast majority of Man Utd signings will be for inflated transfer fees for a variety of reasons. Does that mean they should all have an inflated expectation level by default?

 

BS.