C.Ronaldo and the season after effect.....

[darkglobe]

Sorry if this sort of thing has been discussed before, I could only find relevant bits tucked away on other threads...

Anyway, this is not meant as a chance to lynch C.Ronaldo per se, more a general question.

What is wrong with him this season?

He just seems to be walking around the pitch, moaning at everyone for not being able to deliver the perfect cross or make the perfect run.
Surely if he doesn't want to be there and at Real he's only making himself look worse as a player.

But then, as the doubts rage in my head he produces a cross like he did last night, or a free kick like that on Sunday.

My main question though is that when a player has a season like he did last year, are they ever able to re-produce it? Or is it simply a case of his believing his own hype?

Are there any other good examples of a player having such a wonderful season then doing a C.Ronaldo?

[Guest]

C.Ronaldo and the season after effect.....

If he gets another eight goals in the remaining months of the campaign, he will have surpassed his total for 06/07, which was widely considered his best season up to that point.

He's spent a lot of this season making a fool of himself with his self-pitying posturing, but he's still delivering the goods, by and large.

[dances with sheep]

C.Ronaldo and the season after effect.....

The original Ronaldo's downturn was due to serious injury. With a bit more luck, he would have become the greatest player of all time.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

C.Ronaldo and the season after effect.....

the original ronaldo's downturn was down to moving to Inter milan, who looked at possibly the greatest player ever, with a unique and unstoppable playing style, and decided that what he really needed was another two stone of muscle. This put unsustainable pressure on his knee and it kept popping everytime he tried to turn like he used to at barcelona.

As for the new ronaldo, I think there are three major issues. First of all he missed preseason, and started very sluggishly, and doesn't seem to have fully recaptured the physical sharpness of last season, and has never really built up the momentum.

Secondly, man utd are playing in a rather different way this season. Jonathan wilson has some interesting things to say about it here. Basically man utd are now making an extra 20% or 90 passes in every game, and keeping the ball for longer.

So last season united would go from back to front quicker, and nailed opponents on the counter attack, whereas this season Teams are now so afraid of united's counter attack that they sit much deeper, so ronaldo has fewer chances where he's burst through one on one with the goalkeeper.

Another element of this is that ronaldo is playing more as a winger this season than last, as berbatov is more of a central presence, whereas tevez was as likely to turn up at centre half dragging people out of the way.

The third element is that form is also a bit of a self fulfilling prophesy. Last season everything seemed to go right for him, this season, not much does. people keep going on about how he never played well against chelsea. This season he nailed two great goals and they were both ruled out incorrectly.

This season things aren't all going right for him and he is getting frustrated, and doing really stupid shit. Stuff that would probably largely disappear if things started to go well for him again.

I don't really know how much of his frustration is down to him not being allowed to go to real madrid. To be honest I think that it probably isn't that big a deal at this stage of the season, and he's issued enough statements saying that he's put that behind him and that he wants to stay for several seasons for me to suspect that it's not that big a factor at the moment.

I would expect him to improve a bit towards the end of the season, and i'd be surprised if he didn't manage to get at least 20 league goals.

[darkglobe]

C.Ronaldo and the season after effect.....

Cheers for all the replies, it's certainly reassured me that it's not just the whole sulky brat syndrome coming in!

A fascinating link there Kubelgog, it certainly does make one appreciate the brilliance of their defence doesn't it?

As has been said, Brazilian Ronaldos drop from grace was a mixture of weight and injury wasn't it, although his performance at the last World Cup, lumbering yet still utterly devastating bought a tear to my eye, I was so glad he got that record after all the fat jokes from the commentators.

I personally think C. Ronaldo is up there with Zidane and Giggs in the league of "best players I have seen play live", so hopefully he can adjust to the new Utd shape and regain that outstanding form he hit upon last season!

Also, the word relatively was perhaps missing from my original post!

[G-Man]

C.Ronaldo and the season after effect.....

It is surely not right to judge CRonaldo by his phenomenal performances last season. It should be seen as an aberration, not a norm against which the player must be measured.

Ryan Giggs never had a season quite like CRonaldo's last year. If he had had one like it, he'd been measured against that, and there'd be people who'd regard him as a one-season wonder.

Without the weight of expectation clouding our judgment, I think we'd find that CRonaldo is not having a poor season at all.