Berbatov's bananas, Silva's 'football brain'

At the end of last season, your Mexican correspondent, Hernando Fernando, said that ‘Berbatov is too slow , tries to be too clever, rather than quickly moving the ball on. He is a failure at United.’ Hernando Fernando now admits he himself is the failure at writing and knows nothing - as his mother told him many times while cooking fajitas thus driving him to emigration.

It seemed a reasonable bet, City were looking very steady and Tottenham looked inspired in attack. Meanwhile United were being dogged and lucky, Arsenal were as frail as ever, and Chelsea had, much to everyone’s amusement, simply disappeared....poof, a bit of smoke, a spell of sulphur, just gone.

Berbatov is now officially on 17 goals for the Premier League which shows he is very good for United. By the end of the season he may have 25, an excellent return. For the football purist he also scores his goals as if the ball were a masterpiece of music and he were the conductor. The man has an easy football lyricism about him which is beguiling and beautiful.

He can even fall over, make an elegant tackle and then be involved in one of the goals of the season so far, produced by a backheel, a scorching cross from Rooney, and a thrash of the left foot from Giggs.

The only problem with Berbatov is that he’s bananas.

Berbatov's goal pattern

In other words he comes in bunches, which isn’t some bizarre sexual allusion but a fact. Eleven of his goals have come from just three games. Fabulous but some of his dot-balls, to use a cricketing analogy, if converted into single goal games would cheer his stats up no-end. Make them more even.

Then of course there’s the more mystifying fact of Berbatov being the actor Mark Strong - the fella who played Lord Blackwood in Guy Ritchie’s splendid adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. Nobody has ever seen Strong and Berbatov in the same room. Come to think of it we’ve never seen the pair of them in the same room as Count Dracula either: a player who during his football career used to literally suck the life out of teams.

“Football, bloody hell. They really got it in the neck,” Sir Alex Ferguson once said after seeing the Count completely destroy the opposition in a midweek Transylvanian scouting trip, “shame he’s always unavailable for 3’o’clock kickoffs”.

A man who could be either Mark Strong or Berbatov smoking

A man who could be either Mark Strong or Berbatov smoking

Berbatov’s goals have put United on top of the Premier League. But what about Manchester City?

Two weeks ago as a respected football correspondent who knows nothing about the game, I was pondering in Barburrito aloud to my last taco, whether City would win the league and Spurs would come second.

It seemed a reasonable bet, City were looking very steady and Tottenham looked inspired in attack. Meanwhile United were being dogged and lucky, Arsenal were as frail as ever, and Chelsea had, much to everyone’s amusement, simply disappeared....poof, a bit of smoke, a spell of sulphur, just gone. Maybe they'd had a Transylvanian European night.

Now City and Spurs are wavering.

Against Aston Villa in the second half, the Blue Mooners, camped out as though it were Glastonbury Festival in the Villa penalty area. And just as with camping at Glasto they found themselves bogged down.

The ultimate sadness was that new-signing, Dzecko, who as my gran might have said, ‘looks kind’, missed an easy header to at least get a point. His face looked liked he’d returned to his Glastonbury tent to find that someone had stolen his Stella. Mancini might be forced to buy another striker before the week is out to help him get over the disappointment.

The great news for City is that the elfin David Silva is looking, to quote pundit Steve Claridge’s favourite cliché, ‘like a proper player’. (As opposed perhaps, to all the ‘improper’ players in the Premier League; member of whom seem to dine in Rosso on King Street). Silva has vision, a good turn of pace, and, another favourite of Claridge’s, a ‘football brain’.

Doctors have been trying to locate the exact position of this man's 'football brain'

It’s having this ‘football brain’ that makes him a ‘proper player’. This means that Silva should certainly help ensure City cement their position as a top four team. He could even assist them to become champions, as my taco in Barburrito agreed.

Dimitar Berbatov will be standing in their way of course. Some sources quote him saying he wants thirty Premier League goals this season. City may not need to worry though. He’ll probably score the thirteen he needs in one game. Or maybe his commitment to filming new movie Black Gold will get in the way.