Our shocking goalscoring/goal difference total

KeanoMagicHat

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This season United have scored 45 goals in 28 league games. Despite buying one of the greatest goalscorers of all-time (guaranteed goals) and one of the best young assisters in Europe - 45 assists in 104 games for Dortmund.

So of course United somehow average 1.6 goals per game, on course for 61 goals this season. We have this desperate goal tally despite being overloaded with forwards and setting up in an attacking way. It wouldn't even be so bad if we were set up defensively, so we were set up incredibly open for half the season playing 4-2-4! And our two centre mids aren't helping to stop the goals conceded so what are they doing going forward?

Our goal difference is only +7, Moyes's West Ham is +11. Man City and Liverpool are +50 and +51 respectively.

But this isn't new since Ferguson left. In 2015-16 United scored only 49 goals, in 2016-17 United scored only 54 goals (despite having Pogba, Zlatan and Mkhitaryan signed). In fact the only season since Ferguson that United have scored more than 70 goals was last season under Ole, when we scored 73 goals.

By comparison - the 4 seasons before Ferguson left - 86, 89, 78 and 86 goals scored.

These have been the goal tallies of teams that have won the league in recent years:

21/22: Man City leaders - on course for 92 goals at current clip. (Liverpool meanwhile are on course for 100 goals)
20/21: Man City - 83 goals
19/20: Liverpool - 85 goals
18/19: Man City - 95 goals
17/18: Man City - 106 goals
16/17: Chelsea - 85 goals

So over the past 6 seasons, since Pep arrived, you need an average of 91 goals scored to win the league. Over the past 6 seasons, United's average goals have been 65 goals per season. That's a massive 26-goal gap to be in the position to contend for the title. And yet everyone gives out about our defending? Rashford for the great guy that he is, 59 goals in 195 games. Is that enough? Jota has 37 goals in 110 games for Wolves and Liverpool. There are several instances of this. McTominay and Fred 16 goals in a combined 212 games. Gundogan has 33 in 150 games. Harry Maguire 4 goals in 95 games? Van Dijk has 13 in 120 games.

United are supposed to be an attacking team in their DNA but they can't score goals on a regular basis. How do we make up this gap? How do we score this many more goals? What do we do to solve this? How many years will it take?
 
In the first four games of the season we beat Leeds 5-1 (how glorious did that opening day feel?) and Newcastle 4-1, giving us a GD of +7. In the other 26 league games we've returned a GD of 0. That's shocking.
 
It’s true we haven’t scored anywhere near enough goals but the goals we have conceded are also just as big a issue. Basically we’re not good enough at either end of the pitch.
 
Rangnick's a shit coach and our players' finishing isn't composed enough. Mystery solved.
 
KeanoMagicHat said:
This season United have scored 45 goals in 28 league games. Despite buying one of the greatest goalscorers of all-time (guaranteed goals) and one of the best young assisters in Europe - 45 assists in 104 games for Dortmund.

So of course United somehow average 1.6 goals per game, on course for 61 goals this season. We have this desperate goal tally despite being overloaded with forwards and setting up in an attacking way. It wouldn't even be so bad if we were set up defensively, so we were set up incredibly open for half the season playing 4-2-4! And our two centre mids aren't helping to stop the goals conceded so what are they doing going forward?

Our goal difference is only +7, Moyes's West Ham is +11. Man City and Liverpool are +50 and +51 respectively.

But this isn't new since Ferguson left. In 2015-16 United scored only 49 goals, in 2016-17 United scored only 54 goals (despite having Pogba, Zlatan and Mkhitaryan signed). In fact the only season since Ferguson that United have scored more than 70 goals was last season under Ole, when we scored 73 goals.

By comparison - the 4 seasons before Ferguson left - 86, 89, 78 and 86 goals scored.

These have been the goal tallies of teams that have won the league in recent years:

21/22: Man City leaders - on course for 92 goals at current clip. (Liverpool meanwhile are on course for 100 goals)
20/21: Man City - 83 goals
19/20: Liverpool - 85 goals
18/19: Man City - 95 goals
17/18: Man City - 106 goals
16/17: Chelsea - 85 goals

So over the past 6 seasons, since Pep arrived, you need an average of 91 goals scored to win the league. Over the past 6 seasons, United's average goals have been 65 goals per season. That's a massive 26-goal gap to be in the position to contend for the title. And yet everyone gives out about our defending? Rashford for the great guy that he is, 59 goals in 195 games. Is that enough? Jota has 37 goals in 110 games for Wolves and Liverpool. There are several instances of this. McTominay and Fred 16 goals in a combined 212 games. Gundogan has 33 in 150 games. Harry Maguire 4 goals in 95 games? Van Dijk has 13 in 120 games.

United are supposed to be an attacking team in their DNA but they can't score goals on a regular basis. How do we make up this gap? How do we score this many more goals? What do we do to solve this? How many years will it take?
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The very simple reason why our goals tally has fallen off a cliff since Fergie retired is that he absolutely loved signing quality strikers and we haven’t signed a single top class striker over the last 10 years! Which is fecking nuts but that’s how we are where we are.

Remember when Teddy Sheringham and Ole couldn’t get games because Yorke and Cole were such a great partnership? Or when Fergie was forced to move Ruud Van Nistelrooy on to play more fluid football with Saha, Rooney and Ronaldo. We also had to once find a way to accommodate peak Rooney, Tevez and Berbatov in the same team.

And somehow we ended up going almost a full fecking decade during which a 20-21 year old Marcus Rashford was our best striker over that incredibly long period of time. And now we’re relying on a frigging 37 year old for goals. Absolutely mental. I don’t know how Fergie can even bear to watch us. He knew that goals win games and scoring goals involves signing goal-scorers. It must boil his piss to see so many United managers get that basic principle so badly wrong.
 
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We don't have anybody to score goals. Ronaldo's legs look to be gone now, Cavani is always injured, and Greenwood will never play football again. Our main goal threats are a 19 year old and Rashford who couldn't hit a barn door. Liverpool and City have three players scoring goals. Even Spurs have two.

We've gotten better defensively since Ralf arrived but we've had some big losses through the season to worsen the GD. Liverpool and City obviously, but also Watford and Leicester put 4 past us.
 
Somebody has mentioned it a lot in various threads, might be @Skills -- we've never scored more than 80 goals in a season since SAF has retired. Closest we came was last season where we scored 73 (which is the only time we've done 70+ too, actually!).
 
SirScholes said:
Players are shite
You were 50% correct
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Rangnick's an amazing coach is he? fecking woeful. I'd rather have almost every other coach in the league. Not Lampard, possibly not Arteta although probably. I'd take Woy over this guy.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The very simple reason why our goals tally has fallen off a cliff since Fergie retired is that he absolutely loved signing quality strikers and we haven’t signed a single top class striker over the last 10 years! Which is fecking nuts but that’s how we are where we are.

Remember when Teddy Sheringham and Ole couldn’t get games because Yorke and Cole were such a great partnership? Or when Fergie was forced to move Ruud Van Nistelrooy on to play more fluid football with Saha, Rooney and Ronaldo. We also had to once find a way to accommodate peak Rooney, Tevez and Berbatov in the same team.

And somehow we ended up going almost a full fecking decade during which a 20-21 year old Marcus Rashford was our best striker over that incredibly long period of time. And now we’re relying on a frigging 37 year old for goals. Absolutely mental. I don’t know how Fergie can even bear to watch us. He knew that goals win games and scoring goals involves signing goal-scorers. It must boil his piss to see so many United managers get that basic principle so badly wrong.
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RVP in SAF's last season as well. I want to cry.:(:( How can we change this? Rooney could probably do better than this lot even with the shape he is in. Steve Bruce would still be more of a threat at corners.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The very simple reason why our goals tally has fallen off a cliff since Fergie retired is that he absolutely loved signing quality strikers and we haven’t signed a single top class striker over the last 10 years! Which is fecking nuts but that’s how we are where we are.

Remember when Teddy Sheringham and Ole couldn’t get games because Yorke and Cole were such a great partnership? Or when Fergie was forced to move Ruud Van Nistelrooy on to play more fluid football with Saha, Rooney and Ronaldo. We also had to once find a way to accommodate peak Rooney, Tevez and Berbatov in the same team.

And somehow we ended up going almost a full fecking decade during which a 20-21 year old Marcus Rashford was our best striker over that incredibly long period of time. And now we’re relying on a frigging 37 year old for goals. Absolutely mental. I don’t know how Fergie can even bear to watch us. He knew that goals win games and scoring goals involves signing goal-scorers. It must boil his piss to see so many United managers get that basic principle so badly wrong.
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When did this happen? Ibrahimovic, Lukaku, Martial and even Cavani last season have all been better strikers for us than Rashford has ever been, Rashford has barely even played as a striker since his first couple of years, he’s been much better from the left.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The very simple reason why our goals tally has fallen off a cliff since Fergie retired is that he absolutely loved signing quality strikers and we haven’t signed a single top class striker over the last 10 years! Which is fecking nuts but that’s how we are where we are.

Remember when Teddy Sheringham and Ole couldn’t get games because Yorke and Cole were such a great partnership? Or when Fergie was forced to move Ruud Van Nistelrooy on to play more fluid football with Saha, Rooney and Ronaldo. We also had to once find a way to accommodate peak Rooney, Tevez and Berbatov in the same team.

And somehow we ended up going almost a full fecking decade during which a 20-21 year old Marcus Rashford was our best striker over that incredibly long period of time. And now we’re relying on a frigging 37 year old for goals. Absolutely mental. I don’t know how Fergie can even bear to watch us. He knew that goals win games and scoring goals involves signing goal-scorers. It must boil his piss to see so many United managers get that basic principle so badly wrong.
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We tried though. We signed multiple strikers over the years, from promising talent (Martial) to supposedly proven quality (Lukaku) to established but ageing superstar (Ibrahimovic, Cavani, Ronaldo).

To be honest I'm not even sure what goalscorers we could have got. The only realistic option I can think of from the last few years is Salah when he was still at Roma, obviously. Who are the great goalscorers in Europe these days anyway? Even City couldn't prise Harry Kane away from Spurs just yet and at this point it might not be a wise idea anyway. The La Liga scoring charts are topped by a 34-year-old Karim Benzema; the Bundesliga is still dominated by a 33-year-old Lewandowski; the likes of Mbappe and Haaland have emerged recently and realistically, they are unattainable. City don't even have a great goalscorer.

Is there someone in the footballing world I'm blanking on? Someone we could have got years ago and is genuinely great? Again, other than Salah.
 
It's woeful, this season in particular. Been on the end of far too many drubbings.

Like what was said above, it's the attack. We haven't had a consistently good attack since Fergie retired, and we're not at the level to attract the top level of strikers like Haaland. Instead we sign over the hill strikers looking for a fat paycheck at the end of their careers, or young strikers expected to carry the attack on their own. It wouldn't matter too much if we're conceding too much if we're regularly scoring 2-3 goals a game, it can be fixed afterwards.

We need to target the sort of players who are doing well at smaller clubs, and can make the step up before their value explodes. What about that Nunez at Benfica?
 
Worth noting that our xG (which is a better predictor of future returns than goals already scored) isn't any better than our goals scored this season. 43.7 xG versus 45 actual goals. So it's not like we've just underperformed in terms of putting away the chances we've been creating this season.

However a crucial point is that we weren't any better in terms of those expected stats last season either. In terms xG per 90 it's 1.56 versus 1.58. And in terms of non-penalty xG we're actually better this season, 1.48 versus 1.37. The only real difference between this season and last is that we overperformed that xG last season, finishing on 73 goals from 60 expected. Whereas now we're returning closer to par.

So whatever our problems in attack are, they didn't just appear this season.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The very simple reason why our goals tally has fallen off a cliff since Fergie retired is that he absolutely loved signing quality strikers and we haven’t signed a single top class striker over the last 10 years! Which is fecking nuts but that’s how we are where we are.

Remember when Teddy Sheringham and Ole couldn’t get games because Yorke and Cole were such a great partnership? Or when Fergie was forced to move Ruud Van Nistelrooy on to play more fluid football with Saha, Rooney and Ronaldo. We also had to once find a way to accommodate peak Rooney, Tevez and Berbatov in the same team.

And somehow we ended up going almost a full fecking decade during which a 20-21 year old Marcus Rashford was our best striker over that incredibly long period of time. And now we’re relying on a frigging 37 year old for goals. Absolutely mental. I don’t know how Fergie can even bear to watch us. He knew that goals win games and scoring goals involves signing goal-scorers. It must boil his piss to see so many United managers get that basic principle so badly wrong.
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It kind of comes full circle to me with the 80/20 rule. 80% of productivity comes from 20% of your projects. It's knowing the big picture and what can deliver results. Where is the bang for your buck? For me, there are 4 signings that if you get right, will add so much more than the other 7 positions; GK, CB, CM and CF.

SAF was so good at that. For the 2012/2013 season, we desperately needed a midfielder, but we signed RVP and Kagawa instead. He knew the opportunity cost and that RVP would paper over the cracks of a light midfield (thank god Carrick stayed injury free).

Now I think right now we have too many cracks for that approach to work, but SAF would have probably just spent 150m on Kane instead the hundreds of millions we've wasted over the last number of seasons. And it would have been money well spent.

Scoring goals is the hardest thing to do, and our striker signings since SAF left have been bleak; Falcao, Lukaku, Ibra, Ighalo, Ronaldo, Martial, Cavani. They are either not good enough, or simply past it. Putting the ball in the back of the net is the hardest thing to do, and we've neglected that fact for a long time now, opting for short term fixes and signings that will sell merchandise instead of banging in goals.
 
eire-red said:
It kind of comes full circle to me with the 80/20 rule. 80% of productivity comes from 20% of your projects. It's knowing the big picture and what can deliver results. Where is the bang for your buck? For me, there are 4 signings that if you get right, will add so much more than the other 7 positions; GK, CB, CM and CF.

SAF was so good at that. For the 2012/2013 season, we desperately needed a midfielder, but we signed RVP and Kagawa instead. He knew the opportunity cost and that RVP would paper over the cracks of a light midfield (thank god Carrick stayed injury free).

Now I think right now we have too many cracks for that approach to work, but SAF would have probably just spent 150m on Kane instead the hundreds of millions we've wasted over the last number of seasons. And it would have been money well spent.

Scoring goals is the hardest thing to do, and our striker signings since SAF left have been bleak; Falcao, Lukaku, Ibra, Ighalo, Ronaldo, Martial, Cavani. They are either not good enough, or simply past it. Putting the ball in the back of the net is the hardest thing to do, and we've neglected that fact for a long time now, opting for short term fixes and signings that will sell merchandise instead of banging in goals.
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Yeah, agree 100%. Good post.
 
OL29 said:
When did this happen? Ibrahimovic, Lukaku, Martial and even Cavani last season have all been better strikers for us than Rashford has ever been, Rashford has barely even played as a striker since his first couple of years, he’s been much better from the left.
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Bit in bold is obviously bollox as not one of them ever matched Rashford’s 17 goals and 7 assists in 2019-20, never mind surpassed it.

It’s a pointless tangent anyway. Point is none of those players have been good enough to lead the line at a club with aspirations of winning the league (not during their time at United anyway)
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Bit in bold is obviously bollox as not one of them ever matched Rashford’s 17 goals and 7 assists in 2019-20, never mind surpassed it.

It’s a pointless tangent anyway. Point is none of those players have been good enough to lead the line at a club with aspirations of winning the league (not during their time at United anyway)
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You’re chatting shit, Rashford didn’t play as a striker in 19/20, he played from the left. Martial played upfront that season and had those exact same stats in the league. 2 seasons before that, Lukaku had 16 goals and 7 assists. Ibrahimovic had 17 goals and 6 assists in 2017. Each of them had more goals in all competitions those seasons than Rashford has ever managed. Saying that Rashford has even been close to being out best striker for a decade is a ridiculous reach.
 
eire-red said:
It kind of comes full circle to me with the 80/20 rule. 80% of productivity comes from 20% of your projects. It's knowing the big picture and what can deliver results. Where is the bang for your buck? For me, there are 4 signings that if you get right, will add so much more than the other 7 positions; GK, CB, CM and CF.

SAF was so good at that. For the 2012/2013 season, we desperately needed a midfielder, but we signed RVP and Kagawa instead. He knew the opportunity cost and that RVP would paper over the cracks of a light midfield (thank god Carrick stayed injury free).

Now I think right now we have too many cracks for that approach to work, but SAF would have probably just spent 150m on Kane instead the hundreds of millions we've wasted over the last number of seasons. And it would have been money well spent.

Scoring goals is the hardest thing to do, and our striker signings since SAF left have been bleak; Falcao, Lukaku, Ibra, Ighalo, Ronaldo, Martial, Cavani. They are either not good enough, or simply past it. Putting the ball in the back of the net is the hardest thing to do, and we've neglected that fact for a long time now, opting for short term fixes and signings that will sell merchandise instead of banging in goals.
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Pogue Mahone said:
Yeah, agree 100%. Good post.
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While I agree with those posts, us not signing a striker isn't just this borderline negligence that has permeated all aspects of the running of the club since SAF left, it's also indicative of a pretty obvious trend in football: the lack of top class strikers. The majority of goalscorers now don't play the static striker role. It's why people have gone nuts for Haaland.

If you look at the PL clubs, City until recently have had been relying on Aguero, who they bought in 2011. Multiple attempts to replace him have had mixed results. Chelsea haven't been able to get one to stick since Drogba and have cycled through the likes of Costa, Lukaku, Werner etc. Liverpool have played with a false 9 of sorts who doesn't score many goals since Klopp arrived. Spurs have had Kane in the side since around 2014 and haven't really been able to bring anyone in that came close. Arsenal bought Aubameyang, who was a relative success and Lacazette who seems a little less so. Similarly, Bayern have had Lewandowski since 2014 and Ibrahimovic has been at PSG, United and Milan in that time. Icardi has gone from Inter to PSG, without ever being anywhere near top class. Barca haven't really done much on the striker front in that time, albeit they've had the Messi factor and Madrid's main striker now, since Ronaldo left, is Benzema, who they bought in 2009. The market is so shallow the ones who do move get recycled e.g. Lukaku.

That's not to absolve us of blame, but buying players like Kane is so difficult that you can end up shopping for second or third rate strikers before you know it.
 
OL29 said:
You’re chatting shit, Rashford didn’t play as a striker in 19/20, he played from the left. Martial played upfront that season and had those exact same stats in the league. 2 seasons before that, Lukaku had 16 goals and 7 assists. Ibrahimovic had 17 goals and 6 assists in 2017. Each of them had more goals in all competitions those seasons than Rashford has ever managed. Saying that Rashford has even been close to being out best striker for a decade is a ridiculous reach.
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No. Martial did not match Rashford’s stats that season. He had one less assist. Combine those stats with the season before and there’s a bigger gap. I’m talking league stats only as that’s always the best/fairest comparison.

Anyway, I’m not getting into a tedious back and forth with you about this. As I already said, it’s completely besides the point.
 
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Brophs said:
While I agree with those posts, us not signing a striker isn't just this borderline negligence that has permeated all aspects of the running of the club since SAF left, it's also indicative of a pretty obvious trend in football: the lack of top class strikers. The majority of goalscorers now don't play the static striker role. It's why people have gone nuts for Haaland.

If you look at the PL clubs, City until recently have had been relying on Aguero, who they bought in 2011. Multiple attempts to replace him have had mixed results. Chelsea haven't been able to get one to stick since Drogba and have cycled through the likes of Costa, Lukaku, Werner etc. Liverpool have played with a false 9 of sorts who doesn't score many goals since Klopp arrived. Spurs have had Kane in the side since around 2014 and haven't really been able to bring anyone in that came close. Arsenal bought Aubameyang, who was a relative success and Lacazette who seems a little less so. Similarly, Bayern have had Lewandowski since 2014 and Ibrahimovic has been at PSG, United and Milan in that time. Icardi has gone from Inter to PSG, without ever being anywhere near top class. Barca haven't really done much on the striker front in that time, albeit they've had the Messi factor and Madrid's main striker now, since Ronaldo left, is Benzema, who they bought in 2009. The market is so shallow the ones who do move get recycled e.g. Lukaku.

That's not to absolve us of blame, but buying players like Kane is so difficult that you can end up shopping for second or third rate strikers before you know it.
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Fair point. Maybe swap “striker” for “attacker” in my post. We can pick the bones out of what is and isn’t a purebred striker but we’ve definitely been negligent about creating competition for places up front. There’s obviously been a strategy to get ageing/aged big names to complement the younger ‘potential’ players but we’ve been remiss when it comes to identifying/signing the difference makers in their prime. The likes of Jota at Liverpool, or Mahrez at City. Fergie had a habit of identifying and signing really quality players as soon as possible, then worrying about how they might fit in the squad when the deal was done. That’s how you get a serious strength in depth. We’ve never once looked over-stocked in attacking talent since he retired. Quite the opposite.
 
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we are a mid-table team

Maguire is a typical 80 rated CB on Fifa who belongs to Leicester
AVB is a typical 78 rated RB on Fifa who belongs to Crystal Palace and is rightfully the 4th/5th best RB of England
Fred/McTominay are typical 80 rated CM on Fifa who belong to Burnley or Newcastle
Lindelof is a typical 80 rated CB on Fifa and is also mid-table level
Telles is a typical rotational player
Dalot is still a youth prospect who shall be a rotational player
Rashford is Defoe/Darren Bent/Beattie/Walcott level who belongs to teams like Aston Villa, and if plays for Man Utd, he shall only be a 4th choice striker like how we utilized Alan Smith (but he has too much ego and thinks he is too good to be a 4th choice striker for a dethroned Man Utd, while better players like Forlan, Saha, Solskjaer, Sheringham were happy to be rotational players for Man Utd)
Luke Shaw can be good enough but he chooses to whine about the Euro loss and gives 50% effort
Greenwood belongs to the prison
Ronaldo, Cavani, Mata and Matic were world class but now belong to the elderly care centres
Varane Pogba are world class but always can't play
Elanga is a typical 70-rated prospect you found on Fifa
We paid 35M on Amad who is still a typical 70-rated prospect you found on Fifa
Bruno Fernandes is literally the only world class player we have, but he has a strange habit of gifting the ball to our opponents.
Sancho is a good young prospect who is still adjusting to the premier league.
 
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Pogue Mahone said:
No. Martial did not match Rashford’s stats that season. He had one less assist. Combine those stats with the season before and there’s a bigger gap. I’m talking league stats only as that’s always the best/fairest comparison.

Anyway, I’m not getting into a tedious back and forth with you about this. As I already said, it’s completely besides the point.
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The point was completely invalid though. There’s not a single metric you can use to say that Rashford’s been our best striker over a decade when he hasn’t even really played there. Our recruitment hasn’t been great but pretending that we’ve neglected the position completely and relied on an out of position Rashford is completely false seeing as we’ve had good seasons out of Ibrahimovic, Lukaku, Martial and Cavani in that position.
 
OL29 said:
The point was completely invalid though. There’s not a single metric you can use to say that Rashford’s been our best striker over a decade when he hasn’t even really played there. Our recruitment hasn’t been great but pretending that we’ve neglected the position completely and relied on an out of position Rashford is completely false seeing as we’ve had good seasons out of Ibrahimovic, Lukaku, Martial and Cavani in that position.
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The point wasn’t about Rashford! The point was that we’ve had close to zero top attacking players, at or near their prime in the nearly 10 long years since Fergie retired.

Managers have been picking from a mix of potential and has beens, with the whole Lukaku waste of time and money in the middle of it all. Which is a radical change from the Fergie era when we were consistently over-stocked with 25-30 year old elite attacking talents.
 
miked99 said:
In the first four games of the season we beat Leeds 5-1 (how glorious did that opening day feel?) and Newcastle 4-1, giving us a GD of +7. In the other 26 league games we've returned a GD of 0. That's shocking.
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That hurt to read.
eire-red said:
It kind of comes full circle to me with the 80/20 rule. 80% of productivity comes from 20% of your projects. It's knowing the big picture and what can deliver results. Where is the bang for your buck? For me, there are 4 signings that if you get right, will add so much more than the other 7 positions; GK, CB, CM and CF.

SAF was so good at that. For the 2012/2013 season, we desperately needed a midfielder, but we signed RVP and Kagawa instead. He knew the opportunity cost and that RVP would paper over the cracks of a light midfield (thank god Carrick stayed injury free).

Now I think right now we have too many cracks for that approach to work, but SAF would have probably just spent 150m on Kane instead the hundreds of millions we've wasted over the last number of seasons. And it would have been money well spent.

Scoring goals is the hardest thing to do, and our striker signings since SAF left have been bleak; Falcao, Lukaku, Ibra, Ighalo, Ronaldo, Martial, Cavani. They are either not good enough, or simply past it. Putting the ball in the back of the net is the hardest thing to do, and we've neglected that fact for a long time now, opting for short term fixes and signings that will sell merchandise instead of banging in goals.
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That 2 top posts in threads from you today lad.

There’s a reason at Liverpool it went Mane > Salah > VvD, we need to build from the front.
 
Brophs said:
While I agree with those posts, us not signing a striker isn't just this borderline negligence that has permeated all aspects of the running of the club since SAF left, it's also indicative of a pretty obvious trend in football: the lack of top class strikers. The majority of goalscorers now don't play the static striker role. It's why people have gone nuts for Haaland.

If you look at the PL clubs, City until recently have had been relying on Aguero, who they bought in 2011. Multiple attempts to replace him have had mixed results. Chelsea haven't been able to get one to stick since Drogba and have cycled through the likes of Costa, Lukaku, Werner etc. Liverpool have played with a false 9 of sorts who doesn't score many goals since Klopp arrived. Spurs have had Kane in the side since around 2014 and haven't really been able to bring anyone in that came close. Arsenal bought Aubameyang, who was a relative success and Lacazette who seems a little less so. Similarly, Bayern have had Lewandowski since 2014 and Ibrahimovic has been at PSG, United and Milan in that time. Icardi has gone from Inter to PSG, without ever being anywhere near top class. Barca haven't really done much on the striker front in that time, albeit they've had the Messi factor and Madrid's main striker now, since Ronaldo left, is Benzema, who they bought in 2009. The market is so shallow the ones who do move get recycled e.g. Lukaku.

That's not to absolve us of blame, but buying players like Kane is so difficult that you can end up shopping for second or third rate strikers before you know it.
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That's a very good point. I made it a little simplistic in the above scenario. Let's say we didn't sign Kane, then who? Maybe the popularity of the sole striker up top has lead to less strikers at the top level because the role is more demanding?

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, a decade ago there was an abundance of No. 10's and what seemed a lack of wingers. Now we have an overload of wingers/inverted forwards and not many natural No. 10's.. Swings and roundabouts and all that.

City play without a striker and I don't understand how they manage to do it, it's truly incredible. But maybe in this modern age it is more accurate to say that we do not have a single prolific attacker that you can hang your hat on time and again to deliver. Bar City, it seems every top club in Europe does, so what is it with us?

Personally I prefer the 433, so I'd like us to sign a true striker. Think Sancho has enough about him to balance the goal output and assisting required to play as a winger in the 433. As for the other side, I'm not sure. But even if we had played the 433 the last number of years post Fergie, I'm not sure who we could have bought that was realistically attainable. It's an interesting one.
 
AFC NimbleThumb said:
That hurt to read.

That 2 top posts in threads from you today lad.

There’s a reason at Liverpool it went Mane > Salah > VvD, we need to build from the front.
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Yes indeed, that was the key. VVD was the missing link, and along with Fabinho and Alisson completed the spine of the squad.

Salah gets all the plaudits (and rightly so, he does the hardest job after all), but you need that solidity behind you.

I think you can get close to competing with a top class attack, but ultimately most will fall short if midfield/defence isn't at an equally high level. But if you can't put the ball in the back of the net, having a world class defence and midfield doesn't balance out that deficiency the same way.

Chelsea are feeling that pain a little now, and are falling a good bit off the pace with Lukaku and Werner up top. If they had a world class striker, but had to sacrifice solidity in midfield or defence for him, they'd still have probably won more games.
 
eire-red said:
Yes indeed, that was the key. VVD was the missing link, and along with Fabinho and Alisson completed the spine of the squad.

Salah gets all the plaudits (and rightly so, he does the hardest job after all), but you need that solidity behind you.

I think you can get close to competing with a top class attack, but ultimately most will fall short if midfield/defence isn't at an equally high level. But if you can't put the ball in the back of the net, having a world class defence and midfield doesn't balance out that deficiency the same way.

Chelsea are feeling that pain a little now, and are falling a good bit off the pace with Lukaku and Werner up top. If they had a world class striker, but had to sacrifice solidity in midfield or defence for him, they'd still have probably won more games.
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The bolded have been my thoughts exactly. To win you need to score, we fundamentally struggle at both ends so start from the top then work out what best facilitates the game winners & build around it.

If our VvD, Allison, Fabinho comes up in that time then fine but we need to actively get better in the most critical area to winning a match. AWB & Maguire aren’t worth their fees but they were never going to be worth what we paid in a dysfunctional team. Imagine having that time again & using £130mil on attacking talent.
 
AFC NimbleThumb said:
The bolded have been my thoughts exactly. To win you need to score, we fundamentally struggle at both ends so start from the top then work out what best facilitates the game winners & build around it.

If our VvD, Allison, Fabinho comes up in that time then fine but we need to actively get better in the most critical area to winning a match. AWB & Maguire aren’t worth their fees but they were never going to be worth what we paid in a dysfunctional team. Imagine having that time again & using £130mil on attacking talent.
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Yeah it's shocking to think we spent that on Maguire and AWB, and think about how our rivals have spent in comparison.

Let's hope we've finally learnt our lessons the hard way. This season is an eye opener for the magnitude of task ahead of Arnold, Ralf and co behind behind scenes.
 
TwoSheds said:
Rangnick's an amazing coach is he? fecking woeful. I'd rather have almost every other coach in the league. Not Lampard, possibly not Arteta although probably. I'd take Woy over this guy.
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Why has it got to be amazing?
mate our team is full of morons
 
eire-red said:
Putting the ball in the back of the net is the hardest thing to do, and we've neglected that fact for a long time now, opting for short term fixes and signings that will sell merchandise instead of banging in goals.
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We had no problems scoring goals last season with 73, second highest in the league. Not sure how that's a long time tbf.
 
mu4c_20le said:
We had no problems scoring goals last season with 73, second highest in the league. Not sure how that's a long time tbf.
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Our record for the last 8 seasons for goals scored is 64, 62, 49, 54, 68, 65, 64 and 73. That's an average of 63 per season since SAF. I don't know what we're on course for this season, but probably another 60-odd season in store to compound how pathetic that average is for a team with any title aspirations. I imagine under SAF we were probably averaging 20 goals more a season.

You've just cherry-picked the anomaly season from the last 8/9 years. It definitely has been a long term problem.
 
AFC NimbleThumb said:
The bolded have been my thoughts exactly. To win you need to score, we fundamentally struggle at both ends so start from the top then work out what best facilitates the game winners & build around it.

If our VvD, Allison, Fabinho comes up in that time then fine but we need to actively get better in the most critical area to winning a match. AWB & Maguire aren’t worth their fees but they were never going to be worth what we paid in a dysfunctional team. Imagine having that time again & using £130mil on attacking talent.
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If AWB is being used as an attacking outlet surely he is a problem. We need somebody who does not get caught out of position so much, but can also be an attacking threat going forward. He is turning into a liability at both ends of the field. It would not be so difficult if he lost the ball upfield and somebody actually covered competently for him, but quite often it just leaves that side of the field wide open, just not for our own team.
 
Our best striker post-SAF is a midfielder. Says it all.

Hiring negative dinosaur managers hasn’t helped, mind.
 
SirScholes said:
I don’t think every other team has an amazing coach
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Nope. Many of them are incompetent. You may have also noticed there are 14 teams below us in the league. Our coach is not the 6th best though, he's amongst the worst.
 
IMO our lack of goals is up to RR's method. If you look back to highlights of every chance, every player rushes into the ball before making a shot. It's because they take their positioning to get the ball back by pressing in case of losing the ball in the opponent's yard. It may work in Bundesliga or la Liga because defenders like to hold the ball, but not in PL.
If we position ourselves for a rebound, make movements in the opponent's yard like how Bayern, City, Real, Arsenal plays we could see more goals.
But it's risky when we are trying to implement a high pressing game, also we don't have anyone (except Matic) who can recover the ball or position himself to cover defending areas.
RR knows it, of course, IMO maybe he doesn't believe in our defenders and whoever covering the recovery position, also we don't have the capacity to control the game in midfield.
Those are the reasons for we conceding too many goals in OLE's last days.
 
mu4c_20le said:
We had no problems scoring goals last season with 73, second highest in the league. Not sure how that's a long time tbf.
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All explained in the first post. I would credit Ole with that, but also worth mentioning that 9 of the goals came in one game vs Southampton who very unusually had a man sent off after 2 minutes.

And even then 73 goals is still 18 goals off the average title-winning team. It's alright but it's what should be the minimum expected. To win the league with 73 goals, ideally you need to have a rock solid defence to go with it, conceding 25 or less. That just isn't going to happen with how United are set up.
 
I think the key point is WAS one of the greatest goalscorers of all time. It remains to be seen whether he is still at that level. The signs are not good and realistically speaking everybody has their time, even Ronaldo.

What we actually have is an old boy that makes it hard for those around him to perform, a lad heading to prison, a man that would rather be in South America - anywhere in South America, that is never fit. What are we left with, an out of touch Rashford, the youngster Elanga and Sancho who to be fair has taken a while but is showing signs. It's not looking so healthy as it appeared superficially at the beginning of the season.

A lot of it is also down to simply not playing well and missing chances too. It's not all about individual quality of course, there are many aspects to it.
 
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