[E-mal]

Garnacho, Rashford and Antony get the ball about 20-30 times in a game and take ridiculous shots, put in poor crosses and dribble into defenders. How about they try to create a bit more? Garnacho put in one cross today and it found Maguire for the first goal.

Nobody in this team or the manager is 'good enough', Hojlund included but at least he's not wasting every chance he gets with the ball. Everybody needs to improve but people who criticise him without acknowledging how much worse others are doing in relation with their usage of the ball is shocking.

I said this in the match day thread but Hojlund might make 5 'bad' runs and 5 'good' runs but he will only get the ball about once. He gets to fail or succeed with that one chance compared to everyone else who gets it about 20-30 times more AFTER he is the one who lays it off or is occupying the central space so they have all the time in the world in the wings.

Today he had one through ball in the 1st half and should have got off a better shot away imo i.e did 'poor' and then in the 2nd half got a perfect through ball from Bruno to score. Two clear chances and this is already anomalous compared to the previous couple of dozen games.

Hojlund deserves plenty of criticism but people writing him off is just bad basic level judgement.

My opinion has always been we need a better more experienced striker and he needs to learn his trade without pressure. He is not the type to make his own chances like Martial at tha age.

Obviously we need to improve the whole team starting with our CB and Midfield

 

[Ali Dia]

I'm starting to think that he's been instructed to roam around dragging defenders out of position and bring teammates into play rather than lead the line in this system. A Firmino type would be better served in this role. Or a new manager next year.

I think that’s his role. To tussle and occupy centre backs and make aggressive runs into the 6 yard box between the defenders and turn them around. It’s a physical chaotic role in this side and then when nobody has been consistently able to find him he looks lost. I’d like to add that when any of our other attackers were hitting numbers Bruno was playing much better stuff finding them for fun and winning us matches. I hope Rasmus can strike up that level of partnership with Bruno

Saying that I thought he was poor again tonight and on the periphery till the goal but he’s potentially a brilliant player. His speed finishing and attitude are really positive, he seems professional and like he really loves playing for the club. I wish he was good in the air but we don’t really cross the ball or fight for headers anymore, we do tonight and it gets us a goal. He’s poor in the air for a big guy. I fancy him to finish the season on at least 15 goals which is commendable given the state of the club and the timing of his injuries. A very promising player. I think we’ve finally signed a good one.

 

[Red Royal]

Not his best game but he scored so his haters can be upset tonight.

 

[RedDevil [NC]]

I really don’t get some people’s views, we could have a world class striker and he would still struggle in this team.
I’m hoping a new manager and see how he does next year.

 

[criticalanalysis]

My opinion has always been we need a better more experienced striker and he needs to learn his trade without pressure. He is not the type to make his own chances like Martial at tha age.

Obviously we need to improve the whole team starting with our CB and Midfield

I think your opinion in the match day thread where you said he was shit and that anyone who thinks otherwise can do one is the real issue here. If your defence is 'it's the match day thread bro', well your posts in this performance thread is pretty much of the same rhetoric.

https://www.redcafe.net/search/527214/

I've given you plenty of reasonable deductions about why he's not doing as well as he can i.e the clue is that others are doing much worse with the ball and not playing into him but you're still comparing him to Martial, who has no relevance here.

Just admit you dislike him a lot and until Man Utd start winning games/become a force again, you'll always over criticise a player who's not winning games on his own because that's pretty much your criteria as you'll ignore everything else.

I get it, we all got PTSD from watching Utd.

 

[11101]

In the first 10 minutes he made two excellent runs that would have had him through on goal. Both times AWB hesitated and failed to play the pass. I understand why he stops making those runs and movements as the game progresses. Nobody passes to him, all our other forwards only want to dribble and shoot themselves.

 

[Red00012]

He touched the ball 17 times it says enough about our supply into him.

 

[Alemar]

Finally a goal, it was a while. Now he is just 1 short of 15

 

[Rozay]

Great to see him score. Another poor side at OT next too, so hope to see him continue that and build confidence.

Appreciate those who sent responses to me hours ago, I think I’ve said all I want to say so that will be that.

 

[E-mal]

I think your opinion in the match day thread where you said he was shit and that anyone who thinks otherwise can do one is the real issue here. If your defence is 'it's the match day thread bro', well your posts in this performance thread is pretty much of the same rhetoric.

https://www.redcafe.net/search/527214/

I've given you plenty of reasonable deductions about why he's not doing as well as he can i.e the clue is that others are doing much worse with the ball and not playing into him but you're still comparing him to Martial, who has no relevance here.

Just admit you dislike him a lot and until Man Utd start winning games/become a force again, you'll always over criticise a player who's not winning games on his own because that's pretty much your criteria as you'll ignore everything else.

I get it, we all got PTSD from watching Utd.

He is not good enough to be starter for us at the moment If the aspiration is to qualify for Ucl and compete for the league. I am obviously not God to say categorically he will never be a good striker but at the moment he is not good enough and unfortunately he has many in his company. I am not sure we have one certified player good enough to compete as part of a first 11 competing for the league anyway, so in that sense I might have been to harsh.

He is a decent finisher but otherwise I struggle to point his other attributes. He is 6+ and should be good in the air but he is not, he is big and appears strong but hardly win duels, does not have exceptional pace and rarely ever dribbles.
When Martial came you could see his qualities, unfortunately a combination of poor coaching, poor mentality and injuries happened to him but there was no denying his talent, that is my point.
He is young and that will buy him time, for his sake and ours, we need him to be good, else we are in big trouble

 

[r0663664]

Until Hoijund get more involved and has the ability to create his own chance, he will never be a prolific striker. I can only see him be a backup striker at United.

 

[Mingus]

He is a decent finisher but otherwise I struggle to point his other attributes. He is 6+ and should be good in the air but he is not, he is big and appears strong but hardly win duels, does not have exceptional pace and rarely ever dribbles.
When Martial came you could see his qualities, unfortunately a combination of poor coaching, poor mentality and injuries happened to him but there was no denying his talent, that is my point.
He is young and that will buy him time, for his sake and ours, we need him to be good, else we are in big trouble

 

[criticalanalysis]

He is not good enough to be starter for us at the moment If the aspiration is to qualify for Ucl and compete for the league. I am obviously not God to say categorically he will never be a good striker but at the moment he is not good enough and unfortunately he has many in his company. I am not sure we have one certified player good enough to compete as part of a first 11 competing for the league anyway, so in that sense I might have been to harsh.

He is a decent finisher but otherwise I struggle to point his other attributes. He is 6+ and should be good in the air but he is not, he is big and appears strong but hardly win duels, does not have exceptional pace and rarely ever dribbles.
When Martial came you could see his qualities, unfortunately a combination of poor coaching, poor mentality and injuries happened to him but there was no denying his talent, that is my point.
He is young and that will buy him time, for his sake and ours, we need him to be good, else we are in big trouble

'Too harsh'. On the one hand, 'Utd = poor past 11 years therefore everybody angry mm kay', I understand. On the other, I don't think calling him a nothing player, a waste of money, categorically saying he's shit etc makes for good forum viewing, which adds to the basic/simplistic and toxic takes on here.

Hojlund's qualities are clear to me but he has extremely little ball usage because of players I've mentioned above and tactics. He's not as 'impressive' as Martial was if you want to do a 1-on-1 comparison but Hojlund's potential a centre forward is much higher. Young physical, hard working, fast strikers with good feet that can hold up play, dribble, bring others into play and can finish do not come around very often. Yes Hojlund's not doing this consistently but he's shown enough that he can do it due to his fundamentals. These type of players don't drift from the wing and dribble as much because that's not the important areas of the pitch (for them) and should be occupied by a different profile of player like our current wide men. These are the exact wide men that I'm saying should be a doing a lot better to provide for him.

14 goals thus far for the chances and service he gets is 'fairly' impressive for me. I would not be comparing this to 'but he's not good enough to challenge for the league' though because it's idiotic. Look at Kane with Bayern, who are a far more established team than ours to understand this barometer is always flawed.

 

[L1nk]

4 less goals than Nunez in 12 less games
1 more goal than Jackson in 1 less game

He's also younger than both, Nunez in his second season too. All this and he barely gets any service, it's nowhere near as bad as a lot of you make it out to be. Would be happy with 15 goals for the season.

 

[Raven]

Crazy comment, you sometimes have to wonder if people are watching the same player.

 

[FootballAI]

His hold up play was good today. The main weakness in his game is still his lack of instint to make good run behind the defenders, an instint that makes less physical advantage like Michael Owen or Filipo Inzaghi being great. Today, Bruno has done a number of smart runs inside the box from Mainoo passes, same as Dalot, same as McT immediately when he was coming on. Let's hope that with the new manager and new DM coming next season as well as more time playing with Mainoo and Bruno he would learn and improve next season.

 

[Melville Red]

Bloody hell didn’t we all have shouty moments like that aged 8 in the play yard? ”pass me the ball”, “right I’m going home and I’m taking my ball“. Dear God this club is really in the poo if that’s a true story.

 

[Toshey]

Until Hoijund get more involved and has the ability to create his own chance, he will never be a prolific striker. I can only see him be a backup striker at United.

Haaland has next to none ability to create his own chances.
It's almost like a functional team brings the best out of strikers.

 

[Member 117152]

He is not good enough to be starter for us at the moment If the aspiration is to qualify for Ucl and compete for the league. I am obviously not God to say categorically he will never be a good striker but at the moment he is not good enough and unfortunately he has many in his company. I am not sure we have one certified player good enough to compete as part of a first 11 competing for the league anyway, so in that sense I might have been to harsh.

He is a decent finisher but otherwise I struggle to point his other attributes. He is 6+ and should be good in the air but he is not, he is big and appears strong but hardly win duels, does not have exceptional pace and rarely ever dribbles.
When Martial came you could see his qualities, unfortunately a combination of poor coaching, poor mentality and injuries happened to him but there was no denying his talent, that is my point.
He is young and that will buy him time, for his sake and ours, we need him to be good, else we are in big trouble

He’s a tiny bit slower than Haaland going on stats and younger so still improving his power.

He’s about as fast as strikers get and the quickest in our squad so I don’t get that point one bit. He’s also 21 so obviously the guy has many, many more years to improve his game.

I would argue he’s a bit of a freak to be putting in 15 a season at United at his current age. He screams elite in the future as he hasn’t gotten a boat load of chances this season to score.

Martial played on the wing away from CB’s so got to dribble into space. They aren’t even remotely the same player at the same age.

 

[Schmeichels pinky]

He is not good enough to be starter for us at the moment If the aspiration is to qualify for Ucl and compete for the league. I am obviously not God to say categorically he will never be a good striker but at the moment he is not good enough and unfortunately he has many in his company. I am not sure we have one certified player good enough to compete as part of a first 11 competing for the league anyway, so in that sense I might have been to harsh.

He is a decent finisher but otherwise I struggle to point his other attributes. He is 6+ and should be good in the air but he is not, he is big and appears strong but hardly win duels, does not have exceptional pace and rarely ever dribbles.

You’re right that he should improve in the air. You’re wrong about everything else. Especially as others have pointed out that he’s not pacy - I mean, are you sure you’re watching the right guy? He dribbled and outran Van de Ven, the fastest player in the league.
When the eye test fails you badly, statistics are a good way to get real - for example he’s among the 25 % best forwards when it comes to number of goals per 90 minutes and pass completion (84 % of his long passes). He outperforms his xg resulting in him being among the 3 % best finishers!

 

[Sylar]

In the first 10 minutes he made two excellent runs that would have had him through on goal. Both times AWB hesitated and failed to play the pass. I understand why he stops making those runs and movements as the game progresses. Nobody passes to him, all our other forwards only want to dribble and shoot themselves.

Yep, this has been happening more and more this season. I mentioned it earlier where 'bad habits' will easily creep in where he will stop making runs due to not getting the ball majority of the time. Or when he finally gets the ball played he will take extra touches to try and get that perfect scenario to score rather than hit it first time.

Im glad he got his goal,and am hoping he can go on another run until end of season. We need our wide players to stop always going in and shooting but use the full back overlapping or to go outside and cross. Mix it up but also get it early to hoijlund

 

[Owen Hargo]

If we need to score more goals we need to change our style of play and depending on Bruno’s hollywood passes that works 0.001% of the time. Maybe then we could find some use for Rasmus but not it is not working

 

[didz]

Watching it back this morning, I think a hot-streak Hojlund ends that game with a hattrick. He should have followed Mainoo's shot for a tap-in rather than wait to see where it dropped, and he did himself no favours when he was played through and took an extra touch away from goal. These are the types of chances we know he can convert when on form and it's clear he needed a goal to properly bring him back after the injury, so hopefully that's the floodgates opened again.

Even so, he still got the fourth, which was arguably the most important goal of the game given our recent added time struggles.

Given that he's a pretty streaky player, the fact that he's on 14 goals with 6 games to play and, hopefully, a bit of confidence now, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that he ends on 20. You wouldn't be able to argue against that being a very successful individual season, even if we do still need another striker.

 

[Mike Smalling]

Watching it back this morning, I think a hot-streak Hojlund ends that game with a hattrick. He should have followed Mainoo's shot for a tap-in rather than wait to see where it dropped, and he did himself no favours when he was played through and took an extra touch away from goal. These are the types of chances we know he can convert when on form and it's clear he needed a goal to properly bring him back after the injury, so hopefully that's the floodgates opened again.

Even so, he still got the fourth, which was arguably the most important goal of the game given our recent added time struggles.

Given that he's a pretty streaky player, the fact that he's on 14 goals with 6 games to play and, hopefully, a bit of confidence now, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that he ends on 20. You wouldn't be able to argue against that being a very successful individual season, even if we do still need another striker.

I will buy you a case of your preferred beer if Højlund ends on 20 goals. I'd be happy if he manages to get to 15, to be honest.

 

[didz]

I will buy you a case of your preferred beer if Højlund ends on 20 goals. I'd be happy if he manages to get to 15, to be honest.

I mean, there's also a decent chance he gets injury today and that's his season done, but why not hope? 7 goals in 6 games was exactly what his last flurry was, so I'm just hoping for the same again.

 

[Mike Smalling]

I mean, there's also a decent chance he gets injury today and that's his season done, but why not hope? 7 goals in 6 games was exactly what his last flurry was, so I'm just hoping for the same again.

Nothing wrong with hoping. I hope he scores a hattrick in the FA Cup final and Pep breaks down crying. I just find it pretty unlikely considering how few chances we create for him.

Still, if he ends somewhere between 15-20 goals that is a reasonable return, considering he is a young striker playing for a really poor team in a new league. He's also had a few injuries and doesn't take penalties.

 

[didz]

Nothing wrong with hoping. I hope he scores a hattrick in the FA Cup final and Pep breaks down crying. I just find it pretty unlikely considering how few chances we create for him.

Still, if he ends somewhere between 15-20 goals that is a reasonable return, considering he is a young striker playing for a really poor team in a new league. He's also had a few injuries and doesn't take penalties.

I think when he's confident he might find himself on the end of more scrappy chances, just as he did at the start of the year. But yeah, basically agreed on all counts.

 

[Sunny Jim]

Finally a goal, it was a while. Now he is just 1 short of 15

which would surpass my expectation of his 1st season.

 

[Robbie Boy]

14 goals, which could increase, is a decent return for his first season considering he's played in a messy, disjointed side.

 

[L1nk]

Basically the way we play, we don't utilise Hojlund's strengths at all which leaves him more isolated and lacking in any service.

 

[Chinchy98]

Feels like a poisoned chalice being a CF for United and getting the Caf to observe you objectively.

Lukaku, goal scorer with really poor technical qualities. Deemed not good enough

Rashford, Electric pace but struggles against low blocks. Deemed not good enough at #9

Martial, fantastic on the ball qualities, but doesn’t work hard enough. Deemed not good enough (injuries also factor in here)

Hojlund, bit of a Jack of all trades, can run, decent in tight spaces, great ball striking. Is getting pelters in here.

Lukaku & NHS Martial were the only 9s that got service in a somewhat functional team. A strikers performance is a function of his service, I genuinely believe the Caf would take issue with Kane at #9 and find something to drag him over the coals about.

Lukaku poached goals, but didn’t link play well enough in games when we struggled to build attacks. Martial came deep to pick up the ball in games with no service but this was a stick used to beat the “not a strikers instinct”. Both got pelters relentlessly & they’ve been our best forwards since Zlatan.

After GK, CF is a tough gig, there’s nowhere to hide. Cut Hojlund some slack, he’s physically elite, works hard and is a solid finisher. It will come I am sure of it

 

[youngrell]

I can't really fault his effort, and even though his work rate benefits the team, I can't help but think he could be a bit smarter with his use of energy. He always seems gassed when opportunities present themselves because he's done so much off the ball work, and it makes being composed and ready to finish more and more difficult.

He seems to be getting more and more frustrated with teammates too, reminds me a bit of RvN and Ronaldo with him and Garnacho. Garnacho does well to commit defenders and put them under pressure but he leaves so little room for himself to be able to deliver to Hojlund and it clearly frustrates the Dane.

I'm fairly confident it will click for him and we'll have a very good striker on our hands in future.

 

[laughtersassassin]

The positive with Hojlund is his finishing. It would appear that in a top side he'd do very well goal wise.

Obviously it remains to be seen or proven but considering how shite we've been this year at creating chances I think there is more positives than negatives in what we've seen from him.

Hopefully with a new manager he can get more chances and get a bit more involved in the play as well

 

[erikcred]

The positive with Hojlund is his finishing. It would appear that in a top side he'd do very well goal wise.

Obviously it remains to be seen or proven but considering how shite we've been this year at creating chances I think there is more positives than negatives in what we've seen from him.

Hopefully with a new manager he can get more chances and get a bit more involved in the play as well

So far, he's the anti-Nunez.

 

[Rozay]

Haaland has next to none ability to create his own chances.
It's almost like a functional team brings the best out of strikers.

That’s if you consider the ‘ability to create your own chances’ as solely dropping a shoulder and beating a man. Haaland got plenty of chances at City, Dortmund, Salzburg and Molde. Hojlund has shown to have very few attempts at Atalanta, Denmark and United. To his credit, he takes a very high percentage of what he does get though.

 

[Rozay]

Basically the way we play, we don't utilise Hojlund's strengths at all which leaves him more isolated and lacking in any service.

Find his shot stats for Atalanta.

 

[flameinthesun]

Does seem to be a bit on his heels throughout games where he's not anticipating passes, knock downs etc. Has a lot of talent but still not sure whether what his ceiling potentially is.

 

[Berbasbullet]

Don’t think he’s ready to be our number 1 choice, absolutely need an alternative option next season. Could go the experienced number 9 route or pure long term competition.

 

[RedDevilCanuck]

He needs to work on his heading and his runs. Needs to watch videos of Ronaldo, Cavani and Chicharito.

Our forwards and fullbacks don't give him any kind of support with the exception of Dalot.

It's really hard to judge him this season. His holdup play during his purple patch was actually good. Since the injury and barren goal run his hold up has been atrocious. Confidence I guess is the issue which is understandable.

ETH needs to figure out how to use him. If you have a such a physical specimen you have to devise a gameplan for him. Crosses and getting him in behind.

 

[Paul778]

Does seem to be a bit on his heels throughout games where he's not anticipating passes, knock downs etc. Has a lot of talent but still not sure whether what his ceiling potentially is.

I imagine it's difficult to keep making runs when he knows people aren't looking for them.

Once we have a coached style of attacking play, rather than the moments fc we have right now I think it will be way easier for him. In other teams they have link up players who's first thought it to try to find the striker. I remember one of the matches we lost earlier in the season (I can't remember who) the opposition player said "As soon as I got the ball I looked up and played the pass without thinking - I know he will always make that run".

None of our wing options (Rashford, Garnacho, Anthony) think like that - their primary thought process is to look to cut inside and secondary is to pass it backwards if that isn't on, in the hope of getting it recycled back to them when it might be easier to cut inside.