For what it's worth, I wouldn't have signed Hojlund as I think Ferguson is the superior talent; I would have gone for Taremi this summer for £20M (A stop-gap, yes, but a good stop-gap unlike most of our recent stop-gaps) and then gone for Ferguson in 2024.
That said, I think there are ways where Utd *could* sign Ferguson without ruining Hojlund....
1. The comparison to Haaland/Alvarez makes no sense as Haaland is clearly #1 there. Instead, it would make more sense to compare Ferguson/Hojlund to Benzema/Higuain (2009-2013). In four seasons, Benzema made 27, 33, 34, and 30 La Liga appearances (14, 20, 26, and 19 starts) and Higuain made 32, 17, 35, and 28 La Liga appearances (28, 16, 18, and 19 starts). Extend that to the CL and you have Benzema making 32, 41, 45, and 40 appearances (17, 24, 36, and 25 starts) and Higuain making 39, 23, 47, and 37 appearances (34, 21, 23, and 25 starts).
Utd play 38 PL games each season plus somewhere between 1 and 6 games in both the League Cup and the FA Cup. When you consider that the CL group stages are expanding next season, qualification for the CL would mean somewhere between 8 and 17 matches. That would mean Utd could be playing somewhere between 48 and 67 games per season. Let's assume on average that we end up playing around 55 games per season; that would mean that Hojlund and Ferguson could each start 27/28 games across all competitions. When you include international appearances on top of that, they'll likely be starting 35+ times per season. I don't think either will be an ever-present starter this season so such an amount of games wouldn't represent a drop in minutes for either. Plus I'm not sure it'd exactly be a bad thing if minutes for younger players were managed; has Benzema lasted longer because he wasn't used week in, week out during his early years at Real?
2. Famous last words but maybe Hojlund and Ferguson could sometimes play together. Tactical systems go in and out of vogue; who's to say two-striker systems won't come back into regular use? For what it's worth, Hojlund is more of a channel runner whereas Ferguson seems like more of a link-up man; I think there are instances where they could co-exist as a front two (Maybe against deep blocks?).
3. In theory, whilst Ferguson's transfer fee would be astronomical (And Utd didn't exactly get value on Hojlund either), I don't think either would command sky-high wages as this stage in their careers (This reminds me that I don't like how transfer fees are typically covered in the media; they should announce the total package of transfer fee + wages as that will be what the club is actually paying, not just the transfer fee). This makes them easier to sell on; we've seen ourselves with Harry Maguire and Anthony Martial that high wages can be big impediments to transfers out of the club. Like Benzema and Higuain, we could let the two of them battle it out and if push comes to shove, we sell the inferior player. If both are successes, we'll likely make back a lot of the money we spent; Real spent €41M on Benzema in Summer 2009 and €12M on Higuain in January 2007 before selling Higuain for €40M. On balance, I'd say that Real would have been very happy with how it all worked out. Of course transfer fees are now higher so us buying strikers will cost more than what Benzema and Higuain did but at the same time, we can also sell at a higher price and the market doesn't exactly seem to be inundated with top-quality strikers of a relatively good age.
