Andy cole
9
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 43
- Goals
- 16
- Assists
- 2
- Yellow cards
- 2
- Status
Really thought that was his moment yesterday, would have been huge for him.
Still looks like he needs to up his base fitness level. He works hard but you rarely see a professional looking so gassed during a game.
Still looks like he needs to up his base fitness level. He works hard but you rarely see a professional looking so gassed during a game.
My worry is he's used to bullying defenders due to his physicality and speed, but this isn't going to stand on this level. His back to goal game is only good if he is able to hold off the defender, his touch seems completely random.
The question is, assuming he is a superb finisher, will this be enough? Are there top teams built around top finisher that has very limited overall game? Because that is my worry with Hojlund, not that he's not scoring goals.
No, i actually want players who are physical CFs who aren't poachers (Lukaku and Haaland, but ok apart from them 2).
Drogba? Did you read the question? He played in the french 2nd division until almost 23. He didn't have a good scoring season til his 24/25 age season.
Van Nistelrooy? Dutch 2nd Division at that age. Was 22/23 when he exploded in the Dutch league, 25 when he moved to a serious league.
The reason you can't find any information on them is because it's not a big list. I literally went through this in the summer. Kane barely played in his age 20 season. Ibra was 23 when he moved to Italy. Lewandowski was in Poland until 22 and then took a year to adapt in Germany. Henry was 22 when he started actually scoring. Cavanis first ok seasons were at 21 and 22, but didn't actually start being a good scorer til 23. Dzeko 21 when he moved to Germany, 22 when he started scoring regularly. And on and on and on.
I looked at the list of the best CF's over the past 25 years or so, and then checked their numbers from a young age. The players with a better scoring rate, age 19 season like Hojlund last season, in one of the bigger leagues (top 7 just to include Portuguese and Dutch even if it's significantly weaker) over the past 30 years are Brazilian Ronaldo, Haaland, Lukaku, Torres, Aguero, RvP (Dutch league), eto'o and Rooney (basically same record, 0.45 goals per 90 vs 0.44).
Hojlund ahead of Makaay, Cavani, henry, Suarez, Benzema, Higuain, Adriano.
These guys weren't playing in a serious league or weren't playing at all: David Villa, Andy Cole, Shearer, Vieri, Shevchenko, Osimhen, mario Gomez, Lewandowski, Kane, Ibra, Huntelaar, Dzeko, Falcao, Drogba. Most of these not doing anything until about age 22.
And even breaking down this list, I'd say the players that Hojlund actually plays similar to are all in that bottom list of guys who took longer. He's not a poacher, he's a physical CF who competes physically all day. That's a skill that takes longer to grow, which makes sense, as he's now competing with premier league defenders.
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another poor performance for him. Yesterday showed the market for young centre forwards is poor, as Nunez for Liverpool was also poor. Our wide men as we know aren't great at providing service, but his movement in and around the box isn't good enough yet. At one point in 2nd half, he was tracking the Liverpool defender carrying the ball out of defence, he tracked him to the halfway line and then just stopped and let him go.
He's scored 5 though? Again, second joint top scorer as I said in my post.The guy literally said scoring 1 goal would be a nice start and you conclude this
Wouldn’t it be better to look at players with a similar style/record to Hojlund at 20 and see how they progressed? In England, I can think of Carlton Cole, Conor Wickham and Dean Ashton off the top of my head who were all highly touted as the next big thing at 20. Did any of them go on to justify being possible £70m players?
Paying £70m for a 20 year old who is not clearly a generational talent is madness, especially when you don’t have money to throw around and you absolutely need a top tier CF now, not in 5-6 years.
The madness of the money spent on Rasmus is no longer debatable, but here we are now.
He has to bury that 1v1 on Alisson. Credit Alisson for being brave, but there was plenty of space around him.
He has to bury that 1v1 on Alisson. Credit Alisson for being brave, but there was plenty of space around him.
Really good post!
Also players mentioned in this thread that we should have bought instead : Watkins Tony etc were all playing lower league until their early mid 20s. Anyone expecting this guy to be Rooney wasn’t paying attention. We will get a second striker once Martials wages are off the books. The position like many others at our club is a total mess, not because of Rasmus but because of how poor our other long term signings have turned out (due to the club underperforming in all metrics) or short term deals year after year while the better or more suitable players went to well run clubs.
Also I’d like to add this club is waste ground for talent. We’ve had Pogba and Bruno hit the heights with really poor unbalanced squad around them. Rashford more recently too. Shaw arguably the best LB in the country. Martinez was a beast last year. We can’t ever seem get the whole team playing well together because our recruitment is all over the place. One or two play well while the ones we expected to do well eventually lose form confidence and motivation.
We need a nucleus that will all hit their best form and physical peak around the same time with a few old heads to keep the egos in check. We are massively over complicating this with all our wastefulness and stupid contracts that’s it hard to see a solution to something that should have been relatively simple. Build a hardworking skilful side with a bit of a nasty streak. it shouldn’t be rocket science especially when we can hold onto our best players for the most part.
My biggest worry for him is that for a big strong lad he simply can't hold the ball up. This has been apparent in the last few games.
To his credit he does work hard and being alone up top is usually why he is gassed. But he needs to hold the ball and allow others to come into play.
Yesterday during the match many were slating Onana kicking and Antony generally.
What was noticeable though was how many times Onana found Antony, who went on a run and lost the ball. For which he received criticism. The bigger picture for me was the lack of options Antony had. No one close to him or a pass on for him as he was furthest forward. Which basically meant he had to keep running and ran into trouble.
Now I'm not saying Antony is brilliant or the fees justified for some players, but there is a basic dynamic missing from our game and that is that in the final third no one really seems to be busting a gut or try and help the player with the ball out. Said player with the ball is then slated.
It's not just at the top. I saw Amrabat play a ball into space in front of our fullbacks or wingers. They stopped as of to say "I'm not running to gather that give it to feet".
Just so static and looking lost.
To his credit he does work hard and being alone up top is usually why he is gassed. But he needs to hold the ball and allow others to come into play.
Yesterday during the match many were slating Onana kicking and Antony generally.
What was noticeable though was how many times Onana found Antony, who went on a run and lost the ball. For which he received criticism. The bigger picture for me was the lack of options Antony had. No one close to him or a pass on for him as he was furthest forward. Which basically meant he had to keep running and ran into trouble.
Now I'm not saying Antony is brilliant or the fees justified for some players, but there is a basic dynamic missing from our game and that is that in the final third no one really seems to be busting a gut or try and help the player with the ball out. Said player with the ball is then slated.
It's not just at the top. I saw Amrabat play a ball into space in front of our fullbacks or wingers. They stopped as of to say "I'm not running to gather that give it to feet".
Just so static and looking lost.
I looked at the best scorers over the past 25 years or so and put some extras from the 90's. And of those, yeah it makes sense to look at the same style players and see exactly where they fit. Drogba, Lewandowski, Kane, Dzeko, Ibra, Vieri etc... the physical CFs, not the poachers or attackers who actively avoid contact. Pretty much every single one of those guys took longer to break through, and it's entirely logical as to why. It's harder for 19/20/21 year olds to deal physically with elite level center backs than it is for a kid to just be faster or dribble past them.
Cole got 3 goals at 19 and 4 at 20, didn't even reach 100 in his career. 3 at 21, 2 at 22, 4 at 23... Hardly worth including.
Wickham wasn't playing regularly at that age, tiny sample size. Ashton wasn't in the Prem at that age.
Hojlund has scored 20 goals in this calendar year when he turned 20, between the Serie A, Premier League, Champions League and International games (3376 minutes, or 0.53 goals per 90 minutes over the calendar year). Ignore the random flukey game split. He'll be fine. That's an excellent record for a 20 year old CF to have and even more so when you compare it to other CFs over the years.
But nobody would be paying 75 million for these players at that point in their careers that you have shown examples for, thay is absurd thing about all this, maybe he will get good then at the same time as the players mentioned but that means waiting another 2 or 3 years in hope we have no wasted 75 million and secondly throwing him into the deep end at our club as the main striker at 20 years old compared to examples of players like Drogba amd rvn still playing in the 2nd division of the Dutch and French league is a terrible way to develop a player, sometimes it is best to progress slowly up levels instead of becoming another classic case of moving to a big club too soon and killing their career before it even really begins.
I think he would actually be best copying diallo path and going on loan at a lower status team and continuing his development as a striker.
We can surely all agree now this guy wasn't first choice? Probably not even second on the list. A striker was our number one target this summer and he was the last player we signed in the window and massively overpaid for. He is a player that you sign and loan out for a few years, and yet here we are with him as our (essentially) main striker. Having a striker who doesn't score is a big problem.
It's a different era. We are in the era where mediocre CFs in their mid 20's are priced at 50m+. So if you see a talent who you think is an elite talent, you pay up. Napoli did that with Osimhen, paying 70m for him from Lille when he was 21 and did nothing more than Hojlund did. A few years later he's worth twice what they paid for. Welcome to 2023 where an actual proper CF who shows high potential just comes at that price.
The only chances is pay up for them before they show anything in a top 5 league, or get them from South America or something like that.
Have a feeling a lot of people are in denial about Hojlund. He can certainly improve aspects of his game but for the fee we paid I think it's becoming clear that Atalanta saw us coming.
We aren’t creating a million chances so I’m not expecting him to be top scorer but come on no league goals is a disgrace. His all round play is miles off as well, he’s struggled to link up play or hold the ball up if he didn’t cost us 75m I think he would have hardly got a game this season he’s nowhere near ready.
This squad was in no shape or form capable of carrying a 20 year old striker learning on the job it’s another absolutely awful transfer. 75 fecking million
We are still desperate for a RW even though we signed Antony (90m) and a striker even though we got Hojlund (75m) it’s tiring following this club.
This squad was in no shape or form capable of carrying a 20 year old striker learning on the job it’s another absolutely awful transfer. 75 fecking million
We are still desperate for a RW even though we signed Antony (90m) and a striker even though we got Hojlund (75m) it’s tiring following this club.
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Yeah, the service and chance creation from the team hasn't been very good, but I think still there have been enough chances that he has fluffed. Also, a good striker should be able to create situations for himself, which I haven't seen from him so far. I think his hold up and link up so far has been very ordinary too.
Still, the fees is not on him, it's on our idiotic recruitment team. Though, now in order to help him they need to get a better, more experienced striker to be the #1 and take the pressure of him.
I don't remember him from his time before United, but I don't think his touch was really bad when he come here and improved dramatically with us. Could be that I don't remember it very well.
What's infuriating is that that's £165m gone down the drain, that figure is enough to turn a 3rd place team into a title challenging one - see Arsenal with their Rice purchase or Liverpool with VVD and Alison.
Compound that with the £60m spent on Mount and it's a disaster because it will take ages for us to have the FFF space to rectify these duds so we better hope the likes of Amad, Kobbie and Gore come good because it's going to be a really long time before our finances recover especially if the Saudis don't bite on Sancho, Varane and Casemiro. We are literally screwed.
He said in the league.
There's no one who's called him trash, let alone absolute trash - he's been called not good enough for the Premier League and I haven't seen any posts abusing him for it. The blame is on the manager and the higher-ups who thought an unproven 20-year-old would be the best idea to carry the club.
Secondly, he's nowhere near the most slandered player out of everyone in the team. What rubbish. Have you been to the Onana thread where there are posters hurling actual abuse at the man? Antony? McTominnay?
Hojlund simply isn't good enough for what United need and paid for. Not in the Premier League.
Great post by the way. Full of useful info.
Andy Cole has good positional play and his passing were decent. Although his finishing were horrible at times, nobody can deny that Cole is still a very lethal player that he's still like all time top 10 goalscorers in the premier league.
People have called him a worse Weghorst.... Despite him scoring 5 goals in the champions league.
Højlund has all the right attributes to be a very good attacker. He is, however, very raw, and he has been extremely unlucky. His first goal was wrongfully called off. The first goal is immensely important for any striker, let alone a 20 year old one. Especially when playing for a fanbase with zero patience like ours.
At the same time he is feeding of absolute scraps. Which stats clearly show.
I am convinced the whole McT / double 8 one 6 experiment is hurting him.
Your conclusion is not fully accurate imo. He simply doesn’t score enough goals for what we need, true. At the moment. As for what we paid for, it’s pretty obvious that we paid for his raw talent and potential and probably didn’t expect a glut of goals this year. Apart from not scoring, he does a decent job.
We do need for him to be scoring. That’s partly because of the lack of goals from everywhere else in the team. If Rashford was racking them up like last season, it wouldn’t be such a problem but he’s not. That Rasmus hasn’t got the goals we’d like is definitely a problem but I don’t think he was a bad signing at all. We may look back in three years and say yes he was a bad signing but I don’t think so.
The question is what to do about the lack of goals until he starts getting a few. When the whole team dries up, the instinct is to demand we recruit a 20-goal striker. I would welcome that of course but the whole team is making poor decisions in the last third and until that improves, any 20-goal striker will struggle to actually get those goals in our team.
We're going to end up having to get some other old fart in on loan in January to rotate with Rasmus and take some of the pressure off him for the rest of the season.
Hopefully he'll score in the next two games otherwise that's half the league season with no league goals.
Hopefully he'll score in the next two games otherwise that's half the league season with no league goals.
Yes but the Andy Cole that came to United was completely different to the Andy Cole that finished. Completely
If that's the case, he has no business playing week in and week out, essentially being the focal point of the attack. If he was bought for his potential, he should be used in a way that reflects that. That he isn't, shows clearly that the expectation was that he could contribute this season. What sense does it make to desperately need a goal scorer, and end up relying on potential? We struggle with goals because year after year we've brought in unproductive attackers. Dan James. Sancho. Antony. Even Weghorst. Instead of fixing this we've gone and added another in the name of potential.
Secondly, what is this raw talent that justifies the amount spent? He's a big guy but not particularly aggressive, and he's reasonably pacy but not in a truly exceptional way. Do you see a special talent here?
While I do think he lacks this, that is also a thing that comes with age. I cant think of one striker in modern football (where space is tighter) who did all this at age 20 to be honest. All matured more after age 23 and you see the same with everyone from Lewandowski to Suarez to Watkins.
There is Haaland of course, but at a big club that was at age 22 when at City also. Mbappe I guess? But he’s on a completely different level than and a generational talent.
A good article on him and why he's been struggling in the PL:
https://www.skysports.com/football/...eague-goal-a-problem-of-finishing-and-service
https://www.skysports.com/football/...eague-goal-a-problem-of-finishing-and-service
“The fear among United fans is that Hojlund is being miscast as a target man, expected to hold the ball up and provide the platform to get his team up the field. That is a huge ask of any young striker and Hojlund has struggled to do that against quality centre-backs.”
He isn’t being miscast though. That is the role that a striker in this team has to play and he isn’t very good at it. His main job is to hold up the ball and bring our other attackers into the game. If he can’t do that then it’s a big problem. Yes, it’s a learning process for him but if he can’t get involved and isn’t scoring goals then he obviously shouldn’t be playing.
That is not the player he is though. He is a type of player who does fantastic runs and finds space. (which the article mentions, but you left out)
Hojlund is making those runs. According to the Second Spectrum data, he averages 24.4 attacking runs per 90 minutes in the Premier League this season. That puts him among the competition's top strikers and is actually slightly more than Haaland is registering.
Which again emphasises what a bad signing he was at this time. We don’t need another forward who wants to run in behind and doesn’t get involved. We need a target man who drops off and can bring others into play.
If Hojlund isnt going to be a guy that can compete for PL top scorer spots, what is the point of having him? This isnt Training Wheels FC, either you contribute or its time to look at alternatives that do deliver from day 1
I would argue thats exactly what we need when Bruno is our 10.
The funny thing is there was a key moment where Rashford cut it back during the Liverpool game, and Hojlund never gambled for a tap in. I get he's moving around a lot but I'm not seeing how it's anything elite or more so than your Watkins, Fergusons, even Nketiahs of this world. All of these strikers and others show smart movement in and around the box.
How’s the Bruno link working out with him so far? Bruno thrives when he has a CF who can drop off and link with him and Bruno can run in behind and score goals, as well as picking out runners from midfield/from the flanks.
I’ll add that, whilst Højlund makes a lot of runs, a lot of them aren’t very good. Hopefully that will come with more experience but currently our players are really struggling to find him and that isn’t just their fault.
His runs have become worse over this season I will give you that. His runs for the national team and before joining us where better. Then again often for us he runs in vain because Bruno doesnt see his runs, which is weird given how good Bruno is at passing to a running winger. Bruno needs to start giving Rasmus the same passes he gives the wingers.
As the article suggest our wingers are terrible for any striker. Rashford is at least trying to find a passing option, but Garnacho is very often choosing the option to shoot when he should pass (he is young, should be coached) and Antony..well the less said the better.
The wingers may not be good at service. But what exactly are Rasmus strenghts? His touch is poor and he cannot hold ball up to relieve pressure, as we saw at Anfield. is it mainly runs onto through balls? Anything else. Forgive me but I am not seeing a great deal in him.
We saw climpses at it in the champions league. Us danes have seen him at his best for the national team. He has become a worse player after joining us.
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