Dimitar Berbatov wasn’t as explosive as Cristiano Ronaldo, as powerful as Wayne Rooney or as tenacious as Carlos Tevez, but the languid Bulgarian – and cult favourite – brought his own unique style to Manchester United in the late 2000s.

23 goals in consecutive seasons for Tottenham since moving from Bayer Leverkusen in 2006 convinced Sir Alex Ferguson that Berbatov was worth pursuing in the summer of 2008, as he looked to add even more firepower to his Champions League winning squad.

United eventually agreed a club record £30.75m for the 27-year-old, seeing off competition from nouveau riche Manchester City, who landed their own record deal for Robinho on the same day.

Berbatov was stunning to watch. United’s new number nine wasn’t a typical ‘number nine’. He was by no means a physical bruiser, instead bringing immense flair to the party. Mentally sharp, he seemed to play the game in slow motion, possessing a masterful touch and extraordinary vision.

He could be both a great goalscorer and a scorer of great goals. In that first season, he actually got more assists (11) in the Premier League than the nine goals he scored himself, with United winning a third successive title. He also scored braces in the only two games the team won in what proved to be a very tight Champions League group stage en-route to a second consecutive final.

One goal he set up for Ronaldo against West Ham remains one of the enduring moments of Berbatov’s United career. Chasing down a through that was heading out for a goal kick, he controlled it and in one fluid motion spun and knocked it beyond Hammers centre-back James Collins as if he wasn’t there. He then played it across the six-yard box for Ronaldo to score an easy tap-in.

In terms of singular moments of iconic pure skill, it is right up there with Fernando Redondo turning Henning Berg inside out at Old Trafford for Real Madrid in 2000.

When Ronaldo and Tevez left in 2009, Berbatov’s goals output went up. He increased to 12 in the Premier League in 2009/10 and later got 20 in 2010/11 as United won a record 19th league title to better Liverpool’s previous best tally. That netted him a share of the Golden Boot, the first player from eastern Europe to finish a season top of the league’s goal charts.

Berbatov’s best moments often came in bursts. During that campaign he joined a select group of Premier League players to have scored five goals in a game, putting Blackburn to the sword in a 7-1 thrashing at Old Trafford. He had already scored a hat-trick in a 3-2 win over Liverpool earlier in the same season, the first hat-trick by a United player against the Merseysiders since 1947. His second goal that day was an overhead kick that defied logic, having first controlled it with his knee.

A third hat-trick that season against Birmingham saw him become the first United player since Ruud van Nistelrooy eight years earlier to score three trebles in a single campaign, and as of January 2021, no player has done it since.

Berbatov’s career at United was ultimately relatively brief, spanning just four years in total. But he contributed hugely to arguably the most concentrated period of success in the club’s history. What’s more, he looked utterly breathtaking while doing it.

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