Do we have enough goals in the squad?

GazTheLegend said:
Don't agree at all. I don't think any of those names other than Rashford or Bruno have ever proven likely to score more than 10 goals a season in the Premier League. If they did that would be -amazing-, but my strong belief is quite simply that their decision making and finishing is just not at that level and there is no proof it will ever be.

I will add a qualifier though - with new coaching methods (RUUD) and more cohesion and experience - and Mainoo being around and getting more experienced - they should all improve. I hope I'm wrong and they're going to get to another level. So as a team there could be improvement all around. But there's been absolutely no sign of any of our forwards getting better even in this pre season.
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Since you keep coming back to "finishing", let's just drop it and agree to disagree.
In general I think we have a decent number of players who will chip in with 5-10 goals, and at least one of Hojlund/Rashford/Zirksee should hit 10+. We're not in "20 goals a season striker" era anyway. As somebody else mentioned before, it's not a simple equation of "let's sign Son to add 15 goals to the team", even if he was available for us (and he's not, what should also be considered) he would struggle playing in this United side. This we need to fix first.
 
lex talionis said:
How many chances do we need to score a goal…5, 10, 20?

I’m not arguing that we’re a chance creation machine but it is clear to anyone with open eyes that we’re very poor at finishing on the chances we do create.

Speaking of last season only, who were our brilliant finishers? No one. No Hojlund, not Rashford, Garnacho, Sancho, Martial, Antony or Amad. And the season before that not Weghorst.

We can explain away Hojlund as young and new to the PL. I have no explanation for Rashford other than to suggest (without proof, of course) that he was in a mental funk. Garnacho is still young and did well for us, but he’s no clinical finisher. Sancho and Antony were a mess less season and Amad only came on strong at the end of last season.

No one can argue that we’re sorted as far as finishers is concerned. We have problems all over the pitch, all the way back to the keeper, but we are not sorted as far as accomplished finishers is concerned. Match after match we wasted good chances, not tap ins but chances we would expect to result in goals, and we dropped points. And of course our defending was a shambles and we dropped points to the likes of Bournemouth and Palace, but no one disputes that.

We have to see the game with our eyes open. Our finishing last season was abysmal, though to be fair the parade of excuses for that is persuasive.
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Funny you mentioned it, Hojlund actually did extremely well last year getting his goals from very limited number of chances. He ended up on the high extreme in terms of goals-expected goals. It's even more funny Haaland was on the other extreme end last season, underperforming what he was expected to score. But, he scored a big number of goals (created by his teammates) anyway so who cares.
Rashford was average last season, over the last few seasons he's way over on the positive side. The rest are question marks, and yet it seems to be painted as one of the biggest issues we have?

This is getting ridiculous now, people remember some moments where player missed a chance and extrapolate this for the big picture.
 
Goal scoring would not be as big of a deal if we more more secure in defense and controlling in the middle. Our problem is that we are bad at all aspects of football.

Eric has 2 months (if so much) to show that he has the ability to manage this club.
 
GazTheLegend said:
Don't agree at all. I don't think any of those names other than Rashford or Bruno have ever proven likely to score more than 10 goals a season in the Premier League. If they did that would be -amazing-, but my strong belief is quite simply that their decision making and finishing is just not at that level and there is no proof it will ever be.

I will add a qualifier though - with new coaching methods (RUUD) and more cohesion and experience - and Mainoo being around and getting more experienced - they should all improve. I hope I'm wrong and they're going to get to another level. So as a team there could be improvement all around. But there's been absolutely no sign of any of our forwards getting better even in this pre season.
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Weirdly the two names you mentioned as being the only likely to score 10 are I would say the main reason why we and the others struggle to create good chances and control games so that we would score more goals.
 
I think the kid we got from Arsenal will be our third striker this season. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't promise him this in order to prise him away from Arsenal. I really cant see Sancho staying. I think Amad will operate as a right winger or false 9 depending on circumstances
 
pcaming said:
Goal scoring would not be as big of a deal if we more more secure in defense and controlling in the middle. Our problem is that we are bad at all aspects of football.

Eric has 2 months (if so much) to show that he has the ability to manage this club.
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He's gone this season. The squad is so unbalanced and a lot of that is on him. Also he doesn't know what to do with most of them.
 
Borys said:
Funny you mentioned it, Hojlund actually did extremely well last year getting his goals from very limited number of chances. He ended up on the high extreme in terms of goals-expected goals. It's even more funny Haaland was on the other extreme end last season, underperforming what he was expected to score. But, he scored a big number of goals (created by his teammates) anyway so who cares.
Rashford was average last season, over the last few seasons he's way over on the positive side. The rest are question marks, and yet it seems to be painted as one of the biggest issues we have?

This is getting ridiculous now, people remember some moments where player missed a chance and extrapolate this for the big picture.
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I appreciate the argument, but the overwhelming body of evidence is that as a team we were poor at finishing. But if your objection is that poor finishing is being made the scapegoat, I agree. We were poor in midfield, poor in defending and poor in goalkeeping. And injuries butchered us.

But no one on the planet would argue that United were gifted with great finishers last season.
 
Obviously not. Our entire attack is full either disappointments or young players who have to prove themselves. There’s not a reliable high quality performer in there.
 
Borys said:
No it isn't, that's the whole point. If you can't progress the ball effectively from defense to attackers, you will make it very very hard for the attackers, because they will still find themselves 1 vs 2/3 players all the time. You would need Mbappe level players to make this strategy work. Even if that was possible, do you see candidates for it on the market?

On the flip side, even decent attackers will get you good numbers if put in a well-oiled machine. Which we are not.
At the moment we have a decent number of "goalscorers" in the team, we just don't know how to put this all together into a team that is more than the sum of it's parts - at least that was the case the whole last season.
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For finishing 4th-6th? I'd say more than good enough. Until last season the caliber of players we're competing against (atleast in terms of underlying data and goals scored) are the Wolves, West Hams and Leicester Citys of the world.

West Ham with Moyes ball in 23/24 scored 60 goals with the likes of Soucek, Ward Prowse and Coufal. We scored 57.
Brentford scored 58 in 22/23 with Ben Mee and Mathias Jensesn. We scored 58.
Leicester and West Ham outscored us in 21/22 with guys like Fornals, Dewsbury-Hall and Amartey.

The amount of technical ability we got out of McFred and Maguire/Lindelof/AWB was enough for us to score 73 under Ole with a fit and firing frontline like Bruno, Rashford, Martial and Greenwood.

Just because Maguire isn't Dias doesn't mean he has no ability to pass the ball. What he has should be good enough to score against your average PL side. I dislike Ten Hag but if you gave him an attack of a fit Bruno, Rashford, Martial and Greenwood he'd easily have us scoring that much. Ever since he joined, it was total drama in the attacking dept - first with Ronaldo, then Greenwood, then Antony, then Sancho. Not to mention the injuries and the total lack of depth when a starter gets injured.

I'm a bit disappointed that Olise wasn't prioritized this year. Amad and Garnacho are decent players but Olise would've pushed us to another level. Let's test your theory of average attackers and good defence / midfield this year.
 
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----Rashford/Sancho-----------Zirkzee/Hojlund-----------------Garnacho/Amad

If Rashford can find back his form and bang in 20-35 goals, it should be okay. But if its last year's Rashford, we will struggle. Praying also this is the breakout year for Amad with him contributing with 10-15 goals and assists
 
lex talionis said:
I appreciate the argument, but the overwhelming body of evidence is that as a team we were poor at finishing. But if your objection is that poor finishing is being made the scapegoat, I agree. We were poor in midfield, poor in defending and poor in goalkeeping. And injuries butchered us.

But no one on the planet would argue that United were gifted with great finishers last season.
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Evidence? Where is that evidence? Sorry, I've made a few checks and it something doesn't add up. We've been pretty much average in terms of finishing last season as far as I know.

Just to make it clear, yes we can be better at that aspect. However, this is probably the hardest element to fix from the list of out problems.

Let me ask you this, how many goals you think would've Ruud scored last season in this team?
 
Teja said:
For finishing 4th-6th? I'd say more than good enough. Until last season the caliber of players we're competing against (atleast in terms of underlying data and goals scored) are the Wolves, West Hams and Leicester Citys of the world.

West Ham with Moyes ball in 23/24 scored 60 goals with the likes of Soucek, Ward Prowse and Coufal. We scored 57.
Brentford scored 58 in 22/23 with Ben Mee and Mathias Jensesn. We scored 58.
Leicester and West Ham outscored us in 21/22 with guys like Fornals, Dewsbury-Hall and Amartey.

The amount of technical ability we got out of McFred and Maguire/Lindelof/AWB was enough for us to score 73 under Ole with a fit and firing frontline like Bruno, Rashford, Martial and Greenwood.

Just because Maguire isn't Dias doesn't mean he has no ability to pass the ball. What he has should be good enough to score against your average PL side. I dislike Ten Hag but if you gave him an attack of a fit Bruno, Rashford, Martial and Greenwood he'd easily have us scoring that much. Ever since he joined, it was total drama in the attacking dept - first with Ronaldo, then Greenwood, then Antony, then Sancho. Not to mention the injuries and the total lack of depth when a starter gets injured.

I'm a bit disappointed that Olise wasn't prioritized this year. Amad and Garnacho are decent players but Olise would've pushed us to another level. Let's test your theory of average attackers and good defence / midfield this year.
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I think actually we have a really nice group of attackers this season, a lot of question marks over them but it seems we got some coverage now in all positions. I don't think we've been in that situation for a long, long time.

Midfield though worries me a lot, as long as Casemiro is first name on the team sheet. Defence, we're pretty ok.
 
Maybe it is just growing pains and it'll get better but this has just been a typical Glazer era transfer window so far. I hope they plan to use this next year to develop a state of the art scouting system so we don't just sign more ex Ten Hag players next summer.
 
Borys said:
Evidence? Where is that evidence? Sorry, I've made a few checks and it something doesn't add up. We've been pretty much average in terms of finishing last season as far as I know.

Just to make it clear, yes we can be better at that aspect. However, this is probably the hardest element to fix from the list of out problems.

Let me ask you this, how many goals you think would've Ruud scored last season in this team?
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A sht load. More than Hojlund and he got 15. So 25 plus? Ruud was 10 times the player Hojlund is at now. Maybe not 10 times but Hojlund is not fit to lace his boots. And I like Hojlund but he is nowhere near Ruud. This idea that top strikers wouldn't score goals is nonsense and just used as an excuse. Ok they might not get as many as if they played for City but they would still be miles better than we have now and not only for goals, their overall contribution would be 10 times more. You put Ruud, Rooney etc in this team and we would go up levels. Its an insult to the great players to think they would just struggle. They wouldn't. They would stand out a mile and drag us through games kicking and screaming.
 
Borys said:
Which ones from the list of: Hojlund, Zirksee, Bruno, Rashford, Garnacho, Mount you consider crap? I am obviously leaving Antony out of the discussion as he's now 3rd choice RW at best.
I think we're in rather good situation in terms of attacking formation so just curious.
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I’m talking about a ten year period. At no point in that period have we come close to being top scorers in the league. On several occasions we’ve had the second or third best defensive record. We’ve had a litany of problems over the years, and different parts of the team has been better than others at different points, but the one constant has been goalscoring. It will continue to be an issue this season.
 
Longlivekeano said:
----Rashford/Sancho-----------Zirkzee/Hojlund-----------------Garnacho/Amad

If Rashford can find back his form and bang in 20-35 goals, it should be okay. But if its last year's Rashford, we will struggle. Praying also this is the breakout year for Amad with him contributing with 10-15 goals and assists
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That season Rashford got 17 league goals and we as a team got 58 - the 2nd lowest of all the top 8 and level with Brentford. All of our hope for our strike force is based on around players like Garnacho, Amad, Hojlund, Zirzee etc going up a notch or 5, or others like Rashford finding what they’ve lost. Let’s hope that comes to fruition. I’m even more concerned about the control over midfield though which is crucial to give the attack more to work with - our current midfield is terrible.
 
Under this manager no. We've scored 58 and 57 goals for the last 2 seasons.
 
UpWithRivers said:
A sht load. More than Hojlund and he got 15. So 25 plus? Ruud was 10 times the player Hojlund is at now. Maybe not 10 times but Hojlund is not fit to lace his boots. And I like Hojlund but he is nowhere near Ruud. This idea that top strikers wouldn't score goals is nonsense and just used as an excuse. Ok they might not get as many as if they played for City but they would still be miles better than we have now and not only for goals, their overall contribution would be 10 times more. You put Ruud, Rooney etc in this team and we would go up levels. Its an insult to the great players to think they would just struggle. They wouldn't. They would stand out a mile and drag us through games kicking and screaming.
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Question about Ruud is interesting because we again have a striker that seems to be really good at one thing (finishing chances) and average (let's assume) in every other aspect. Hojlund had games without a shot on goal last season, I agree it's partly down to him, but I think any striker would've struggled in this team so let's agree to disagree.
 
Kag said:
I’m talking about a ten year period. At no point in that period have we come close to being top scorers in the league. On several occasions we’ve had the second or third best defensive record. We’ve had a litany of problems over the years, and different parts of the team has been better than others at different points, but the one constant has been goalscoring. It will continue to be an issue this season.
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I will disagree on this. In 20-21 we've scored 73 goals and that was 2nd best after City. We had a really good forward line with Martial, Greenwood, Rashford and Bruno as #10 for a moment. Like you mentioned, we had some decent defensive records as well.

One constant is neglecting midfield formation (both in terms of the personnel but also what they should actually be doing), and last season we've reached a new height.
 
Borys said:
I will disagree on this. In 20-21 we've scored 73 goals and that was 2nd best after City. We had a really good forward line with Martial, Greenwood, Rashford and Bruno as #10 for a moment. Like you mentioned, we had some decent defensive records as well.

One constant is neglecting midfield formation (both in terms of the personnel but also what they should actually be doing), and last season we've reached a new height.
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73 in the grand scheme of things is a pathetic total.

Just last season alone 7 clubs got more than 73 goals in the league. Post Ferguson we've consistently been the most boring club in the top quarter of the table.

If you want to see a few goals, you don't tune in to watch Man Utd these days - unless we're facing a big club then you might see one of them put a few past us.
 
We need to aim for about an extra 20 goal minimum than last year. If we are more clinical and stop wasting chances then this should be possible. Rashford if he back in form will bag an extra 5 minimum. Bruno with an improved midfield behind him which allows him to play further forward will add an extra 5 too. Selfishness and greediness being removed when it comes to playing an easy pass rather than shooting could add an extra 5-10 based on last year. Amad if given enough chances will get 10 this year I'd think. Zirkzee remains to be seen how he will do but you'd expect 5-10 from him.

There are goals in the team, about 25-35 extra if we sort out performance, whoch hopefully the new coaching setup will do. We had too many instances last year where players were playing for themselves rather than the team, taking steps shots on when an easy pass would have resulted in a goal. The amount Hojlund was denied was pathetic. There weren't enough goals from set pieces either. There's a lot of ifs, buts and maybes here but I genuinely believe this squad with a few additions can play teams off the park and score a lot more than we've shown in the last 2 seasons.
 
Borys said:
I will disagree on this. In 20-21 we've scored 73 goals and that was 2nd best after City. We had a really good forward line with Martial, Greenwood, Rashford and Bruno as #10 for a moment. Like you mentioned, we had some decent defensive records as well.

One constant is neglecting midfield formation (both in terms of the personnel but also what they should actually be doing), and last season we've reached a new height.
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I did highlight above that we had a period with Greenwood, Martial and Rashford hitting some form at the same time. Still, 73 isn’t really an impressive total and that whole period of football in empty stadiums is something of an outlier.

I don’t doubt problems have been present elsewhere, but the overwhelming constant for ten years has definitely been our inability to put the ball in the back of net at the rate of our rivals.
 
Borys said:
Evidence? Where is that evidence? Sorry, I've made a few checks and it something doesn't add up. We've been pretty much average in terms of finishing last season as far as I know.

Just to make it clear, yes we can be better at that aspect. However, this is probably the hardest element to fix from the list of out problems.

Let me ask you this, how many goals you think would've Ruud scored last season in this team?
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I'm sorry to report the news to you, but we were poor last season in all aspects of play -- specifically, in terms of goals scored and goals allowed. My evidence, limited to the PL, is the table:

https://www.espn.com/soccer/standings/_/league/ENG.1/season/2023

In this table you will see that we scored 57 goals and conceded 58 goals over the span of 38 PL games.

Brentford, who finished in 16th place, scored 56 goals. City, who won the PL trophy, scored 39 more goals than United. But let's stipulate that FC 115 is an outlier...Arsenal scored 34 more goals than United. But let's stipulate that Arsenal had an unusually lucky season (which would be false, but let's go with that for now), Liverpool scored 29 more goals than United. But let's stipulate that City/Arsenal/Liverpool are simply levels above United and that we should no longer be held to their standard...Villa scored 19 more than goals than United. Fifth place Spurs, who had just lost their goal machine and was bedding in a new manager...17 more goals scored than United. 6th place Chelsea...23 more goals scored. 7th place Newcastle...28 more goals scored. 9th place West Ham...3 more goals scored.

If you want to argue that we were "average" you might be right. I'm not going to enter the data in a spreadsheet and run sorts, but eyeballing it alone not only were we far off the pace the other 10 top clubs in terms of goals scored but it looks like we were in the bottom half of the top clubs in terms of goals scored. Top of the bottom half, for sure, but below the top half.

I don't claim to be a top red so please don't take this the wrong way but "average" for a club like United is actually poor, if not completely disgraceful. We have our parade of excuses lined up but whatever the excuses are we were very poor in terms of goal scored last season.
 
We've spent so much money on this team and we still go into every season asking questions about if we have enough for this or that.

In the last decade if we were deliberate in fixing every department every specific year we would be in a much better position.

We can all see how bad our defensive midfield department is, if the answer is Ugarte he should have been here and done pre season with us.

Rasmus on his own as a striker is not enough and in our attempt to fix it we manage to sign someone who is sort of a striker but not really one.

We did well with York but he's injured, we needed another defender before he went down anyway but here we are.

The never ending failings...
 
Escobar said:
No we dont. But not in terms of scoring, but because our midfield is too poor
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Bruno and Mainoo are “poor”? You have a point with Casemiro, but Bruno and Mainoo are not weak links.

To properly identify the reasons why we scored so few goals last season, you really need to start with the front line. Here are their names:

Rashford
Martial
Garnacho
Antony
Amad
Hojlund

The senior names among those 6 disgraced the shirt last season. The three young players performed as well as could be expected, but would come nowhere near starting for City or Liverpool.

We lack clinical finishers last season, end of. Hopefully Ruud will fix that this season, but looking at last season we pissed away multiple great chances on goal that would have turned defeats into draws and draws into wins.
 
lex talionis said:
Bruno and Mainoo are “poor”? You have a point with Casemiro, but Bruno and Mainoo are not weak links.

To properly identify the reasons why we scored so few goals last season, you really need to start with the front line. Here are their names:

Rashford
Martial
Garnacho
Antony
Amad
Hojlund

The senior names among those 6 disgraced the shirt last season. The three young players performed as well as could be expected, but would come nowhere near starting for City or Liverpool.

We lack clinical finishers last season, end of. Hopefully Ruud will fix that this season, but looking at last season we pissed away multiple great chances on goal that would have turned defeats into draws and draws into wins.
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Only Mainoo is a proper midfielder but only 19. Bruno is more of an attacking midfielder who had mixed seasons in the past years. Our central midfield is so weak that not even these 2 can control games and make sure we are positioned to create chances
 
We do not have many goals in the squad, not because of only players, major reason is our play style.
 
A front four from Odegaard, Viera, Martinelli, Saka, Jesus, Havertz & Trossard scored 91 goals in 38 games last season. They scored 88 the season before last without Havertz.

Replace our attacking players with them and we'd still be asking the same question.
 
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Most definitely not. Amad will definitely contribute more than Antony, but I'm not confident about Rashford.
 
Feels like our hopes of not finishing 8th or lower again hinge on another Rashford purple patch.

All sides above us have more proven goalscorers.
 
lex talionis said:
Bruno and Mainoo are “poor”? You have a point with Casemiro, but Bruno and Mainoo are not weak links.

To properly identify the reasons why we scored so few goals last season, you really need to start with the front line. Here are their names:

Rashford
Martial
Garnacho
Antony
Amad
Hojlund

The senior names among those 6 disgraced the shirt last season. The three young players performed as well as could be expected, but would come nowhere near starting for City or Liverpool.

We lack clinical finishers last season, end of. Hopefully Ruud will fix that this season, but looking at last season we pissed away multiple great chances on goal that would have turned defeats into draws and draws into wins.
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Bruno isn't really a proper midfielder and Mainoo is still a kid. Most of the midfield options are either terrible or terribly mediocre. Our attack is not great but our midfield is much worse.
 
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