Do we have enough goals in the squad?

Lookoing at the game against Liverpool right now, every time they win the ball they attack in mass 4-5-6 players running. Often when we come there are 1-2-3 players. I believe that is a big difference and if we had gotten more different runs we would get more goals in general. No matter who is on
 
Heine said:
Lookoing at the game against Liverpool right now, every time they win the ball they attack in mass 4-5-6 players running. Often when we come there are 1-2-3 players. I believe that is a big difference and if we had gotten more different runs we would get more goals in general. No matter who is on
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We had those opportunities in the first half as well, but made the wrong pass or gave the ball away.

We are also not clinical in front of goal, look at that Zirkzee chance, you have to score that
 
ManUnitedCanuck said:
We had those opportunities in the first half as well, but made the wrong pass or gave the ball away.

We are also not clinical in front of goal, look at that Zirkzee chance, you have to score that
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Yeah, it's an absolutely shite attack and EtH is playing this ridiculous 'high risk no reward' gameplan.

The first goal, casemiro stupidly gives the ball away and both full backs are high up the pitch. If the pass Casemiro had attempted actually came off, would we have done anything with the attack? chances are, it would be a no going by the evidence. So there's massive risk for so little because our team just can't fecking score enough goals.
 
ManUnitedCanuck said:
Been far too many seasons without an actual goal scorer in the squad
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Absolutely. We have no players who are really confident in front of goal. No 'natural' goalscorers. Rasmus is a forward, a work-horse (like Darwin Nunez). But look at players like Jota, Salah.. they think like goalscorers.

Rashford. Bruno. Martial. Antony. Garnacho. Amad. Mount. Zirkzee(??) etc, etc.. None of these have been, or are natural goalscorers. Arsenal have a similar problem and that's why I can't see them winning the League or Champions League. You need goalscorers to win things. There are not many top goalscorers about (this is the nature of football, changes in style..) but Manchester United should have one. No doubt about that. Go break the bank and get a goal scorer.
 
No

It was a good window,despite the current performances....it wasnt a perfect one though.

Not signing an additional midfielder and attacking wide player was the main errors (and another).

And that SHOULD have been funded this summer withthe sales of Rashford and Bruno Fernandes in my opinion.

I actually dont think Fernandes/Mainoo work in the same midfield, espeially without the ball...add the inconsistency of Fernandes for 2/3yearsnow....should never have got a new contract considering his age....same mistake we have made countless times.

Perfect window forme would have had those two out, no Zirkzee signing and Nico WIlliams, Desire Doue and Ivan Toney in....same or smaller net spend. Obviously isnt that simple but we have two goals in three games....f**k the XG stattos, we are toothless
 
Heine said:
Lookoing at the game against Liverpool right now, every time they win the ball they attack in mass 4-5-6 players running. Often when we come there are 1-2-3 players. I believe that is a big difference and if we had gotten more different runs we would get more goals in general. No matter who is on
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Exactly coaching, United don't penetrate the box off the ball it takes one player dribbling into the space.

Erik is a dinosaur tactically, he can't get anything right from the midfield to the attack.

He's even got the goalkeeper choice wrong in consideration to the percieved value Onana would bring before he was aquired by the club.

These are the circumstances of being deployed under a rubbish coach.
 
Will be a huge problem. We have no attacker that is fit to swap shirts with a Salah.
 
I just don't see where all the goals are coming from at the moment, it's scary.
 
When our wingers hardly create, it's not a surprise. Laughable people were turning their noses up at Sterling, he would have actually beaten his man today.
 
So, how many matches do you think it will take for United to surpass Erling Braut Haaland in Premier League scoring?

Three matches in, United stand at 2 goals, Haaland stands at 7.

I'm going to say that we won't surpass him until at least round 15.
 
Nothings really changed since last year. Garnacho is young and inconsistent, and we've added another attacker who isn't really a goalscorer.

It's worrying, but predictable.
 
I don't get this subject. How are we supposed to score goals when we don't actually get the ball to our attackers?

We don't create enough or even receive the ball in the final third enough to talk about goalscoring. It reminds me of when we got Ibra or Lukaku.
 
I think we've got one of the weakest attacks of the top teams, so what can we expect? Garnacho current talent is over egged, same with Amad. Rashford is still nowhere near his best, and Zirkzee jury's out too early to say. Hojlund has a big season and a lot of pressure to kick on.

That's not even touching on the midfield which creates so little outside of Bruno who is massively inconsistent and frustrating, while being still one of our best and most important players.

What a mess.
 
Since his first day as a manager Sir Alex prioritised signing a goal scorer. First summer transfer for him 1987 we signed Brian Mclair from Celtic after his brilliant form 86/87 with 41 goals, through the summer of 1988 with signing Mark Hughes and the story continued until his last summer transfer were he signed the PL top scorer RVP. While football dynamics can dictate who the top scorers of the squad depending on the tactics, like united 2008 and 2009, but we always had a top scorer.

I can accept a young, still thriving player in other positions, but how can anyone underestimate this position in a club in the size and prestige of Manchester united by signing players (no disrepsect to them) like Hojlund and Zirkzee who prior to signing them not passed the 10 goals mark. I can understand a little bit the Zirkzee deal as squad player with a different role than a traditional goal scorer, but it's criminal how we ignored this position.
 
Giggsyking said:
Since his first day as a manager Sir Alex prioritised signing a goal scorer. First summer transfer for him 1987 we signed Brian Mclair from Celtic after his brilliant form 86/87 with 41 goals, through the summer of 1988 with signing Mark Hughes and the story continued until his last summer transfer were he signed the PL top scorer RVP. While football dynamics can dictate who the top scorers of the squad depending on the tactics, like united 2008 and 2009, but we always had a top scorer.

I can accept a young, still thriving player in other positions, but how can anyone underestimate this position in a club in the size and prestige of Manchester united by signing players (no disrepsect to them) like Hojlund and Zirkzee who prior to signing them not passed the 10 goals mark. I can understand a little bit the Zirkzee deal as squad player with a different role than a traditional goal scorer, but it's criminal how we ignored this position.
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Bang on. In addition, we rely on two very young and still developing wingers (and a totally finished one). Receipe for disaster.
 
After watching the Liverpool game, it became clear we don't have enough goals in our team. Once we went 2-0 down I couldn't see how or who, could claw that back for us.

We need Hoijlund back for us ASAP. We need a front man. We should really have bought Toney this window, purely just to have a striker to aim for. If Hoijlunds going to be injury prone (aren't they all at United!) then we really need a proper striker to cover him or rotate.
 
The thing that really fks with your head is - Why do all the top people at United think our attack is good? I mean Van Nistelrooy must know we are fkd. We scored 57 goals last year for fks sake. And the answer was Zirkzee? Man City/Arsenal/Liverpool/Villa/Tottenham/Chelsea/Newcastle all have better attackers than us. We are 8th at best around the level of West Ham and Brighton. Sure we can say If Rashford recovers his form from 2 years ago and if Garnacho kicks on and Amad has a breakthrough season etc. But that's jam tomorrow thinking that is not the way big clubs think.
Even if they find form. How many goals will we get 70's? Is that good enough? We need 90 plus goals.
 
We will continue to make chances, but games will be a coin toss as we don't have any high level attacker to rely on to decide games in moments. Salah made three of his moments count and decided the game yesterday. If those same moments fell to one of our attackers we are still probably not registering on the scoresheet. Combine this with a litany of bad decision making in midfield it will be a very long season for the club. A squad that is not ready to be competing at the top of the league.
 
Thought Zirkzee really could have got a goal (or two) yesterday.

At least it was a bit of a silver lining for me. He can get into decent goal scoring positions. Just needs that bit of composure to finish.
 
Apologies if this has already been highlighted here but since 2021, Mo Salah is the 4th highest scoring player at Old Trafford in all competitions, and that, my friends, includes United players.

Let that sink in a moment...
 
The title of this thread should be changed to ....
"Do we have any goals in the squad? "

Pre-season (inc. the Community Shield) PL 6 ... GD -2
Season so far PL 3 ... GD -3
After the last 9 games (OK it was only pre-season etc, etc...) ...GD -5

.
 
Todd said:
So, how many matches do you think it will take for United to surpass Erling Braut Haaland in Premier League scoring?

Three matches in, United stand at 2 goals, Haaland stands at 7.

I'm going to say that we won't surpass him until at least round 15.
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You're an optimist!
 
Banana Republic said:
The title of this thread should be changed to ....
"Do we have any goals in the squad? "

Pre-season (inc. the Community Shield) PL 6 ... GD -2
Season so far PL 3 ... GD -3
After the last 9 games (OK it was only pre-season etc, etc...) ...GD -5

.
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Since Erik took over our Goal Difference is +11. In the same time, City have +204, Liverpool +174 and Arsenal +125.

fecking pitiful.
 
ManUnitedCanuck said:


These stats explain a lot and are concerning about being able to score
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These tables are dumb. We had a stupidly bloated squad before and none of those guys who left were contributing anything anyway. The players who left aren't an issue.

Yes we have a young or inexperienced forward line, but it's not a lack of players, as our squad is finally balanced nicely. Players need to be developed and play within a system that gets them into scoring positions regularly so that they can grow that backing. Hojlund was a highly sought after young striker, Zirkzee was the young player of the season in Italy. We have a good group of wingers who have a lot of potential. Bruno can score a good chunk of goals. I think our attack will show a much better level once we get a better manager in, just like we showed a much better attacking level when Solskjaer was in charge (who also wasn't good enough, but was better than Ten Hag).
 
No.

It's really baffling that we didn't address this issue in the summer. Yes, we signed Zirkzee who has 13 goals to his name in 53 games in Serie A but he is not a natural number 9. Last season we scored 57 goals, five more than the relegated Luton Town, and I sadly can't see how we are suddenly going to score 70+ goals. I understand we had issues everywhere on the pitch and the need to address the defence was substantial. But if we don't score goals we won't win many games.
 
ManUnitedCanuck said:


These stats explain a lot and are concerning about being able to score
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Those stats don't really mean much. Those players scored 2 goals for us last season. It's a very disingenuous way of analysing our problem.

You might as well say we've added 284 goals by adding Van Nistelrooy to our coaching setup. His on-field contribution won't be that different to those players last year.

We do have a problem with scoring, but those aren't the stats to back that up.
 
Within the club I don't think anyone is looking at the current crop of attackers and thinking any of them will score 20+ goals this season.

Look more long term and you could imagine a few of them getting close to those numbers in 1-2 more seasons.

This season we are all just going to be a bit patient and hope as a group multiple players can get close to 10-15 goals and make up for the lack of one real WC goal scorer.
 
We have only scored 2 goals in 3 league games.
If that form and scoring rate continues for the whole season (it obviously won't, of course), that would result in only scoring 25 league goals in total, compared with last season's 57 !!


.
 
Big Andy said:
Since Erik took over our Goal Difference is +11. In the same time, City have +204, Liverpool +174 and Arsenal +125.

fecking pitiful.
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Stats like these just reiterate that those wanting to keep ETH at the club have no understanding of football…or just don’t watch us play.
I’d go as far as saying that we will finish below mid table if he stays all season and will have about the 3rd least goals scored.
 
Neither Hojlund nor Zirkzee look like prolific goal scorers, which would be ok if our wingers could score goals. Problem is, they can't.

It really boggles the mind how poorly managed the club has been since Moyes demanded that we bring in Fellaini.
 
UpWithRivers said:
The thing that really fks with your head is - Why do all the top people at United think our attack is good? I mean Van Nistelrooy must know we are fkd. We scored 57 goals last year for fks sake. And the answer was Zirkzee? Man City/Arsenal/Liverpool/Villa/Tottenham/Chelsea/Newcastle all have better attackers than us. We are 8th at best around the level of West Ham and Brighton. Sure we can say If Rashford recovers his form from 2 years ago and if Garnacho kicks on and Amad has a breakthrough season etc. But that's jam tomorrow thinking that is not the way big clubs think.
Even if they find form. How many goals will we get 70's? Is that good enough? We need 90 plus goals.
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This is really spot on, lots of hope and wishful thinking here, thought INEOS were better then that. Makes me question this summers business. Is Zirkee the right player? Would it have been better to just go again with Maguire and use that money for a Toney for example?
 
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