Should West Ham United and Everton make a short-term move for the 35-year-old?
Dimitar Berbatov told BBC Sport on Wednesday that he would jump at the chance to return to the Premier League.
“When you’ve played in the Premier League you don’t want to play anywhere else,” said the free agent.
“In this stage of my career I know where I am – I would happily play for a team where they use my experience and my knowledge. I can help young players develop and make the team stronger. In the end it’s all about helping the team play.”
Naturally, a number of Premier League sides might be interested in the 35-year-old striker, but should Everton and West Ham United be among them?
Both need an out-and-out centre-forward, albeit for very different reasons.
Everton have a bang-in-form Romelu Lukaku, who has seven league goals in nine outings, but Ronald Koeman’s side are arguably too reliant on the Belgian; punctuated by the fact he has scored almost half of their Premier League goals.
He may seem like it, but the 23-year-old is not a machine and he more than likely will slow down at some stage of the season – he went eight games without finding the net last term. In the 2014-15 campaign, he endured six-match barren spells on two occasions.
If his form dips this season, and history suggests that it will, then Everton, at the moment, don’t have an out-and-out striker who can supplement his goals, but Berbatov, a Golden Boot winner in 2011, could be a short-term alternative.
The former Tottenham and Man United marksman turns 36 in January, and he will have certainly lost a bit of pace since his glory days in England, but speed was never a huge factor behind his talismanic time in the Premier League. His exquisite touch, off-the-ball movement, eye for goal and silky feet won’t have deserted him just yet.
He has certain qualities that even West Ham could not baulk at. Slaven Bilic has a plethora of striking options, but none of them inspire much confidence at the moment.
It is growing increasingly difficult to rely on Diafra Sakho and Andy Carrol; Simone Zaza is without a goal in nine appearances; Ashley Fletcher is wholly unproven, and Andre Ayew, a £20.5 million signing from Swansea, has started one match due to injury.
Berbatov is hardly the 30-goal-a-season striker that Hammers fans crave, but what he could be is a decent back-up for a fit-again Ayew until the end of the season.
With service from Ross Barkley and Yannick Bolasie, or Dimitri Payet and Manuel Lanzini, who’s to say the legendary Bulgarian could not roll back the years at Everton or West Ham in the short term?
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