After scoring 7 in midweek, we won't see another goal this side of Christmas.
Par for the course under this manager.
Par for the course under this manager.
Do we have enough goals in the squad?
- Thread starter ManUnitedCanuck
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran are here to talk about a frustrating 2 points dropped at Crystal Palace. They then discuss the regeneration of Old Trafford. Finally, Nik is joined by special guest Michael Statham from the Football Oranje podcast - who gives us a more in depth look at our EL opposition FC Twente, and then runs through the (many) Dutch connections currently at United.
I do like Zirkzee, but he’s clearly not a reliable goalscorer. Maybe we should have gone for Toney? Just as an example.
I'm so shocked no one saw the lack of goals in this squad going to bite us in the arse this season....
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We all knew this was going to be a problem. A lot of young, developing or new players and possibly some familiar issues with the more senior players. Depressing.
We've not had xG of 7 in the previous game, we've outscored the xG, and in other games we've underperformed. The problem is those goals are not evenly speaded across games, what is a temporary anomaly I'd say. I wouldn't be worried about it too much. We're seeing progress on terms of chances creation and general play, that is more important now in this transition season.
If you look at Fergies teams in the 90s 2000s we had goals all through the team. The treble winning team had 4 top strikers. The mantra was you score 2 we score 3.
Now we have none. Yes Zirkzee and Hojlund are developmental players, but nowhere near good enough to get us challenging for the title. after that you have a youth player Wheatley and we have the Arsenal kid Obi Martin coming in and will probably be fast tracked. Both untried at Premier league level of football.
What happens if Hojlund doesnt score more than a dozen Premier goals this season? Do we do a Sancho and move another £70 odd million player on, or persevere?
I think our summer transfer window should be two top attackers coming in, even if we spunk £150 million + on two players. If you dont score enough you dont win the big prizes.
Now we have none. Yes Zirkzee and Hojlund are developmental players, but nowhere near good enough to get us challenging for the title. after that you have a youth player Wheatley and we have the Arsenal kid Obi Martin coming in and will probably be fast tracked. Both untried at Premier league level of football.
What happens if Hojlund doesnt score more than a dozen Premier goals this season? Do we do a Sancho and move another £70 odd million player on, or persevere?
I think our summer transfer window should be two top attackers coming in, even if we spunk £150 million + on two players. If you dont score enough you dont win the big prizes.
I'm also shocked. Didn't see this comming at all
Hardly a surprise. We’ve needed a proper striker for years and ETH has done everything except buy one.
Höjlund and Rashford are very pacy but lack technical ability and are not very clinical. Not good in possession.
Amad is the opposite, very technical but lacks pace and end product.
Garnacho is most allround of our strikers, technical and pacy.
Zirkzee seems a fine link player but lacks pace and has missed too many chances.
It is no wonder that this group is struggling for goals.
Amad is the opposite, very technical but lacks pace and end product.
Garnacho is most allround of our strikers, technical and pacy.
Zirkzee seems a fine link player but lacks pace and has missed too many chances.
It is no wonder that this group is struggling for goals.
In all seriousness, how much is the manager responsible for missed chances? I am kinda torn. On one hand, SAF was brilliant at knowing when / how to gauge and improve striker confidence with a rest or an arm around the shoulder or a shout. Do we think Rashford under SAF would have been one of United’s greatest ever?
One the other hand, Ole was pretty damn good at getting his players to finish. We (the Caf) was famous for criticizing Ole saying that we were scoring only through individual brilliance, not through tactical genius.
Why can’t we score under Ten Hag in the PL? And why can’t he get us firing? He has to have some accountability for this, no?
It was clear this was going to be an issue, we really needed to bring in a wide player who's more of the finished article. Garnacho and Amad aren't consistent enough yet to be starting together regularly. It didn't have to be someone capable of scoring 25+ but an experienced solid winger who would likely guarantee double figures could have made a big difference.
Here’s the reality when you play a player like Zirkzee who is very similar to Firminho your two wide strikers must be goal gluts like Mane and Salah were.
Rashford could be a goal glut in this system, providing the coach believes in him but we need another Left footed right winger like Raphina. Add that to the fact we score very little goals from Midfield and right now De Ligt looks he might be our 4th or 5th top scorer come the end of the season, which is why we are in a world of trouble?
It's amazing after spending hundreds and hundreds of millions on this squad over the last few years, we don't have anyone in the most important position on the pitch good enough to be a prolific goalscorer.
Our top scorer had 10 league goals last year and it'll probably be similar this year. It's so poor.
Our top scorer had 10 league goals last year and it'll probably be similar this year. It's so poor.
This is a major issue that must be dealt with.
We can't keep this going, yesterday's game exemplified why it's so important to have goal scorers, we dominated the game, our defenders shut out the oppo attackers for large parts of the game and our midfielders dominated in the middle, yet our attackers didn't score goals at all and missed some big chances, our most experienced attacker (Rashford) is streaky, our top goal scorer from last season (Hojlund) just returned from injury, Zirkzee isn't a prolific goal scorer, nor is Amad, while Garna is great he tends to miss big chances, we really need to drastically improve chance conversion rate
There looks to be a lack of confidence or a feeling of pressure. We don't look comfortable in those situations currently.
Zirkzee is fine considering what he brings but the wide forwards and CAM need to do more.
If you are going to play with Zirkzee at the 9, you need your wide players to be goal scorers…unfortunately we don’t have that at the moment. Side is lacking goals and will cost us immensely throughout the season.
Played 5 league games, scored 5 and conceded 5. The football in the first half of yesterday's game was, on the whole, better quality than we saw last season. But, we just don't seem to have 'it' when it comes to scoring goals. We haven't got a killer instinct. We seem to have a mentality that if we miss a chance, another will come, and if we miss that, another will come after that. It's too wasteful. Crystal Palace haven't won any of their 5 games. We really should be putting teams like this away with ease. Game should have been over in the first half.
Just waiting on something clicking. We created great chances yesterday and if one of them went in you could imagine a lot of confidence come through. Just need these chances to turn into goals, instead of giving the keeper a chance or fluffing it. Diaz for Liverpool is a great example. You just know he’s going to score when our players it’s probably less than 50/50.
I think that’s why we bought ruud in.. but again, he can’t work miracles over night. We either need to invest big on goals or it will come like a ketchup bottle so to speak.
Guess the plan is to be very solid defensively and win loads of games 1 or 2 nil.
Interesting in 22/23 when you were a comfortable third you scored 58 goals. Newcastle scored 68 and Liverpool amusingly scored 75 (and only conceded four more). Likes of Brighton and Spurs scored more so you've never been that high scoring a team under ETH even with Rashford scored plenty that year.
Conceding 43 was second joint best with Arsenal so that's your best hope to improve under ETH's style, three clean sheets from first five games but still feels like high level midfields will still cut you open unless Ugarte settles in very quickly.
Interesting in 22/23 when you were a comfortable third you scored 58 goals. Newcastle scored 68 and Liverpool amusingly scored 75 (and only conceded four more). Likes of Brighton and Spurs scored more so you've never been that high scoring a team under ETH even with Rashford scored plenty that year.
Conceding 43 was second joint best with Arsenal so that's your best hope to improve under ETH's style, three clean sheets from first five games but still feels like high level midfields will still cut you open unless Ugarte settles in very quickly.
Should've gone for Toney in the Summer.
In the post Fergie years we've only ever reached above 70 goals in one season and that was Ole's second year here (73 goals) which was helped enormously by a demolition of that Leeds team and a 9 man Southampton. I've been anticipating another very poor year on this front sadly, but i'm hoping our general play improves and we can take it from there.
Interestingly, Arteta's scoring record in two of his early seasons was even worse than EtH's but now they're scoring 80+ goals regularly. We can hope it gets better but for this season we'll be lucky to get 60 goals unless things drastically improve or a new manager comes in at some point.
Strikers missed out on in last 6 years
Haaland (listen to Ole you clowns)
Watkins
Isak
Kane (break bank)
Toney (bargain despite age)
Still time to sign
Osimhen
Sesko
Gyokeres
Haaland (listen to Ole you clowns)
Watkins
Isak
Kane (break bank)
Toney (bargain despite age)
Still time to sign
Osimhen
Sesko
Gyokeres
United are a chance missing machine. I really don’t understand why we haven’t brought in a proven goal scorer in his prime since Berbatov 16 years ago.
We also have the mentality that when faced with adversity like not being able to score early we just run out of belief and game peters out completely
The squad has fewer goals than someone on death row.
5 goals through 5 matches; in the bottom 7 in terms of goals scored. Not shocked at all.
Who will have more EPL goals by Christmas, Manchester United or Erling Haaland?
Who will have more EPL goals by Christmas, Manchester United or Erling Haaland?
They should be relishing pressure and chance to quieten media but nope they just melt in the heat
Never seen a team more in need of a proven top class goal scoring forward. We played some good neat football vs palace but never really looked like converting the chances created. You only have to look at the GD last season and there’s no sign of that dramatically improving this season.
Yeah how many of us said a prolific goalscorer was the biggest issue and so it has proved. Club tied their hands on two attacking signings by the money wasted in summer 2022 and 2023
This is true.
However, it is also a common trend throughout football. In the 90s the Premier League, and other leagues, were stacked with goalscorers. Now they are few and far between. I guess partly because strikers are expected to offer much more in open play, or because teams play less direct so poachers don't have numerous loose balls to latch on to.
In the 90s, if we needed to replace a striker there were probably 10-20 viable options from within the Prem alone, plus dozens more from abroad. Now there's only a handful on the cards each window that clubs fight over. And they aren't often huge successes - for example there's still question marks over Nunez at Liverpool (or Jota as a 9), same with Jackson at Chelsea, Havertz at Arsenal.
Most sides, outside of City, get most of their goals from wingers and attacking mids. Our biggest problem is that ours are currently misfiring. Bruno, Rashford, Garnacho, Antony, Mount and Diallo all need to score more consistently.
Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and plenty of others have all struggled to ge
The winning mentality that has been ingrained into the modern fabric of this club has been so severely eroded since SAF retired that it's now just a whisper on the fecking wind. The players don't have it and the manager certainly doesn't. Who even knows if the owners have it. Judging from decisions over the summer, I'd be hesitant to say they do.
We've needed to invest in a top class striker for a while, but haven't bothered going all in for one. Thus we are left with a team that has no desire to win, made up players who can't reliably score goals.
There's progress here, if you look hard enough, but feck me it's frustrating.
We've needed to invest in a top class striker for a while, but haven't bothered going all in for one. Thus we are left with a team that has no desire to win, made up players who can't reliably score goals.
There's progress here, if you look hard enough, but feck me it's frustrating.
Sadly club has no intention of addressing until next summer, we will get the excuse the options aren't there in January
Højlund?
I will always be a little bitter that we didn't just send Spurs a blank check for Kane. For a world class, EPL-proven striker to have been available like that right when we desperately needed one...sigh.
We should have made him an offer too good to refuse, honestly.
I'm unbelievably bitter we didn't do that, especially when I see him banging them in for Bayern
Are you serious?
Pretty sure he qualifies.