9
The more he hones in on this one time he made a well timed run and didn't receive the pass, the more it stands out that it's about all he did. Good strikers get themselves involved in the game more than a handful of times. He did three things I remember in 90 minutes.You keep repeating this isolated event in the match because there isn't much else demonstrable evidence in support of your claim that Hojlund does some of the things he's being criticized for not doing on a regular basis.
I think it's too early to write him off yet. He needs help and support.
I don't like to comment negatively on Hojlund because I have maintained from the beginning that it was terrible, terrible recruitment to have him lead the line and be the main guy at his age and level, but what is undeniable is that his reading of the game and play is actually shockingly bad.
He plays with no guile, craft or thought. Strikers, more so than anyone else on the pitch are supposed to be full of cunning, awareness and opportunism with the first steps in their head and everything else falling in line with that - it should be a doddle for a clever striker to bamboozle this level of opponent with his movement - either away or toward the ball - and look classes above just with the cuteness of his game. What we see with Hojlund is a player who is not able to outfox CB's, which is why he is so often pointlessly tussling with them, rather than leaving them in his vapour trail, distressed and het up that they can't get a read on him. It's a very bad sign when a striker is not able to shake low calibre defenders off literally at will - Rasmus should not look mostly lost and anonymous vs this level of opponent.
To compound the above, technically he is wildly erratic and unreliable in his: first touch, hold up play, passing and use of his body (shaping), which is going to play a hand in why others are wary of instinctively passing to him; if they don't believe he will have the ball stick, or use it well enough to be worthwhile using him in plays, they obviously will pick another option or simply go it themselves.
I personally think leading the line for us is really affecting him and what we're seeing is a poor reflection of the player due to his distressed state. When players/humans aren't doing so well, they seek familiarity and comfort and typically revert to type, and that'll be when coaching and drills go out the window. I reckon the kid is stuck in a terrible cycle there and it is getting to him.
Amorim is going to have to look at the player, his pros and cons, but more importantly, his psyche and what makes him tick and try and work with him from there to stop him doing what comes more naturally, which is being physical for the sake of it, rather than weaponising and understanding his own assets and advantages. His attributes need to be honed, sharpened and then fine tuned. Instead, what we're seeing is actually regressive - he's worse than the player he came here as. That, imo, is down to having a role at Bologna that he understood and was fine with alongside teammates that understood and catered to his game. Here? He's in a much tougher league alongside players who don't cater to him in the slightest and it is resulting in the freestyle, poor improvisational mess that we're seeing. Some players do better without restriction because of their football intelligence, others, need the strictures and confines of the system to automate things and have them play a defined role in a predefined way... Hojlund is not the former and it is hindering his game and development that we don't have a way of playing that is going to extract the good and leave the bad to one side in his game.
He's just so raw, much rawer than should be signed unless talking about prodigious talent (like a young Martial) and he needs games away from the spotlight to develop and improve in a consummate way, where he is not micro analysed and under the intense burn of our spotlight for every game he plays. From the very start, he should have had a veteran striker ahead of him taking on the burden and brunt of goalscoring pressure and responsibility, with him getting the last 20 or so minutes of games - that, or a loan. It's simply ridiculous that we're in a predicament he is the only lead-the-line striker at the club. Even worse, we then buy in a not #9 to share the load with him... just shocking all round. Amorim is going to show some serious credentials if he can get a proper tune out of the player Hojlund is at this stage in his development. The kid is a 100m behind the 100m starting in line in a race where his foot needs to be on that starting line as a default. The champions of Greece are around middling Championship level, without insult, and it is games like those where he should be showing he's head and shoulders above in every key aspect, so these games are more concerning than PL ones because the PL won't give as many chances to show what kind of player you are if you're raw where games like this should.
"remember that 45 minutes against Crystal Palace?"You keep repeating this isolated event in the match because there isn't much else demonstrable evidence in support of your claim that Hojlund does some of the things he's being criticized for not doing on a regular basis.
You keep repeating this isolated event in the match because there isn't much else demonstrable evidence in support of your claim that Hojlund does some of the things he's being criticized for not doing on a regular basis.
Well, yes, it is being completely ignored so I am repeating myself. You can't make up things like he is always in the wrong positions when he was in fact in the right position. Had Amad made that pass, this thread would not have been as negative towards him.The more he hones in on this one time he made a well timed run and didn't receive the pass, the more it stands out that it's about all he did. Good strikers get themselves involved in the game more than a handful of times. He did three things I remember in 90 minutes.
He's the one who looks silly on this thread because he can't bare the thought that his boy is a dud and he's clutching at absolute straws to try and defend his performances, 21 or not.
I'm not as worried about the ETH situation repeating itself. The footballing structure above him are the decision makers. He doesn't get a veto like ETH did. If we sign Gyokeres and he turns out a dud, that's on them.My main concern with buying Gyokeres is that he'd cost a fortune, and we've already been stung with a manager bringing in a player from his former club for an astronomical amount, only for him to flop.
The Antony fiasco became a real millstone around Ten Hag's neck. Because of the price tag and the fact that Antony was "Ten Hag's guy", he persisted with him far longer than his performances merited, to the detriment of the team, and it undermined confidence in Ten Hag with the fans, and I'm sure players as well. A kind of, "Christ, if he thought Antony was worth this much money, he must be clueless!"
Say we sign Gyokeres for I dunno, £80m and he flops, I could potentially see the same thing happening with Amorim.
Having said that, I think Gyokeres has a much stronger body of work behind him than Antony ever had! And I'd be gutted if Gyokeres went to Arsenal or Chelsea and tore it up there, while we were still rotating between Hojlund and Zirkzee!
So maybe the risk is worth it!
You have a very biased opinion. The main problem is: he is just not very good and it was clear yesterday. He does not know how to impose or position himself. He also received the ball close to the box but his first touch let him down every single time. I have serious doubts that he will be able to improve a lot, even under AmorimHe has regressed immensely under this awful system that is set up to only supply wingers. Anyone thinking Gyokeres would look good in this system doesn't understand the players.
Running channels has always been his main strength and he did it alot when he came to ud but that was quickly removed because he never received the ball.
What we saw yesterday is the culmination of a promising talent ruined by a terrible system and useless coach.
He has a chance now with Amorim, hopefully it isn't to late.
"remember that 45 minutes against Crystal Palace?"
Always amusing when one thing is constantly referenced to defend someone, as if it makes up for them being useless 90% of the time
I'm not sure we we'll sign Gyokeres, he's 26 now and will be 27 by the time the next season begins. SJR has openly said our policy will be to find "the next Mbappe"...so I think us signing players over 25 will be rare.I'm not as worried about the ETH situation repeating itself. The footballing structure above him are the decision makers. He doesn't get a veto like ETH did. If we sign Gyokeres and he turns out a dud, that's on them.
This is so true.. He has the same problem when playing for Denmark, where he has not scored for more than a year, and Denmark looks better when he is not playing.. There is nothing in his career so far that tells us he will be a beast, its only based on hope for those guys who keep saying thisMy scouting opinion is that he is definitely a dud and won't make it here. There's a few lads in the youth setup that already look more natural strikers and make better runs. Scott Mctomminay got on the end of about five last season that Hojlund was just strolling towards. He doesn't put himself in the positions, it's not about service. Amad and Garnacho provide lots of service from wide, Bruno from deep, it's just Hojlund is about five yards from where you'd expect him.
"remember that 45 minutes against Crystal Palace?"
Always amusing when one thing is constantly referenced to defend someone, as if it makes up for them being useless 90% of the time
There's a post above listing strikers who took some time to show their worth. It's not a coincidence that none of these players had most of their development at a big club. They all spend years learning their trade at smaller clubs, sometimes even at a lower level like the Championship.What is prevalent with Højlund is people conflating what he is now with everything he is ever going to be. I will reiterate that non-prodigious youngsters are rarely seen starting games for the biggest clubs, and even when they are, it's a matter addressed as soon as a transfer window is open, so the abnormalities here are on us buying him, dropping him into the team as raw as anything and then expecting him to learn on the job with no guidance or mentors. That is the incredulous bit.
Players like Højlund are honed and developed at smaller clubs and typically come to a club like ours when close to being ready to explode into top class players - someone like Sesko, for example, who has loads of impressive attributes, but is maybe 18 months from putting them all together in-game effortlessly. We typically don't see all this floundering about and the growing pains of development to this degree. Normally youngsters in our team have exceptional spikes in certain areas of their game and then we work on rounding out their game and those are the type of growing pains we are used to. Take someone like a young Andy Cole who was "just" a prolific box player before coming here as a youngster. Our growing pains were watching him expand his horizons and working on his entire final third game. Those are our normal types of journey we see, not what Højlund is going through.
2 years down the line you would seriously hope he has ironed out the myriad erroneous aspects of his game and that's normally when we'd be interested.
The shark was pole vaulted over in this instance and compounded by making him our sole #9. A player this raw should not be jobbing #9 here.
Your hidden creativity should always be hidden. After reading all these names above i’m okay with Ruby now.Rubes?
Ben?
Amo?
Amore?
Rim rim?
How can you say that with this much conviction. He scored 10 in 30 last season which would roughly equal 13 goals over 38 games, and he didn’t even start in more than half of those 30 games. He did that at age 20. What did Gyokeres do at that age? Young players don’t have linear development. I’m not saying he will go on to be a world beater, just asking for some perspective. I think it’s fair to at least give him a full season with Amorim before writing him off.He is a bit of a donkey in all honesty. Good work rate, decent physical attributes but other than that. Lacks the technical and football intelligence to be a top top striker.
I reckon he is at best a 15 league goals a season target man striker. Perfectly ok for a mid table side I guess.
How can you say that with this much conviction. He scored 10 in 30 last season which would roughly equal 13 goals over 38 games, and he didn’t even start in more than half of those 30 games. He did that at age 20. What did Gyokeres do at that age? Young players don’t have linear development. I’m not saying he will go on to be a world beater, just asking for some perspective. I think it’s fair to at least give him a full season with Amorim before writing him off.
Nothing to add on here, we went in on him too early and without another reliable striker to take the pressure off. Hopefully we will sign the Sporting striker in the summer, their ages align, by the time he is 25 Gyokores would be 30-31 and with the new European formats there will be enough games to share around over the next three or four seasons. Not ideal but making the best of a fecked up situation. Another option would be to include him in the Gyokores deal but pay more to have a buyback clause.What is prevalent with Højlund is people conflating what he is now with everything he is ever going to be. I will reiterate that non-prodigious youngsters are rarely seen starting games for the biggest clubs, and even when they are, it's a matter addressed as soon as a transfer window is open, so the abnormalities here are on us buying him, dropping him into the team as raw as anything and then expecting him to learn on the job with no guidance or mentors. That is the incredulous bit.
Players like Højlund are honed and developed at smaller clubs and typically come to a club like ours when close to being ready to explode into top class players - someone like Sesko, for example, who has loads of impressive attributes, but is maybe 18 months from putting them all together in-game effortlessly. We typically don't see all this floundering about and the growing pains of development to this degree. Normally youngsters in our team have exceptional spikes in certain areas of their game and then we work on rounding out their game and those are the type of growing pains we are used to. Take someone like a young Andy Cole who was "just" a prolific box player before coming here as a youngster. Our growing pains were watching him expand his horizons and working on his entire final third game. Those are our normal types of journey we see, not what Højlund is going through.
2 years down the line you would seriously hope he has ironed out the myriad erroneous aspects of his game and that's normally when we'd be interested.
The shark was pole vaulted over in this instance and compounded by making him our sole #9. A player this raw should not be jobbing #9 here.
You have a very biased opinion. The main problem is: he is just not very good and it was clear yesterday. He does not know how to impose or position himself. He also received the ball close to the box but his first touch let him down every single time. I have serious doubts that he will be able to improve a lot, even under Amorim
Truth is also the quality of Serie A is generally lower and he had a small sample of games there. Can't extrapolate much.I am biased because you have a different opinion. Arrogant nonsense. The truth is he was showing a great talent in Atalanta playing under a system where he was running the channels playing to his strength. At United he has been asked to play in a system that emphacises his weaknesses and does nothing to use whatever strengths he has. Unless you are one of those who believe Ten Hag's system was getting the best out of our players and none of them are good enough.
Truth is also the quality of Serie A is generally lower and he had a small sample of games there. Can't extrapolate much.
It's a bigger sample size and he's got unreal numbers there relative to Hojlund. Moreover he's showing the goods in the CL too.And the portugese league is even lower yet people are convinced Gyokeres would do much better?
Hojlund had no substantial talent to regress. Only has hope of improvement from unreliable rawness to something useful or may be even very good. But that's all if-then-else-when, and anybody's guess.He has regressed immensely under this awful system that is set up to only supply wingers. Anyone thinking Gyokeres would look good in this system doesn't understand the players.
Running channels has always been his main strength and he did it alot when he came to ud but that was quickly removed because he never received the ball.
What we saw yesterday is the culmination of a promising talent ruined by a terrible system and useless coach.
He has a chance now with Amorim, hopefully it isn't to late.
Bruno has not been particularly known for supplying his strikers, though, has he? He aims for the wingers because it is easier that way, and that is how we are set up to attack. He is capable of the brilliant pass through the middle if the opponent team are playing a high defensive line, but he is not known for his ability in tight area or with little space, that is pretty well known. He didn't supply Ronaldo or Cavani much either with them making runs. Cavani has one of the best off-the-ball movements for a striker in the last 20 years, so don't really see why you would blame Højlund for that.The thing is :
Bruno consistently finds Garnacho, Rashford & Amad making runs in behind the defence;
However Hojlund has no ability to make runs in behind the central defence as a striker & only ever does when the opposition defence has been completely opened and he is outsprinting a last defender.
Many people say that Haaland would struggle here, but the fact is that Bruno would find Haaland make runs in behind the defence.
Hojlund in comparison is almost always grinding his arse on the defender and never making those killer runs that break the offside trap; so naming him as this "channel running striker" is very confusing because its arguably the least thing he does & the weakest of our front line at doing so whist playing with a very creative attacking midfielder right behind him.
Bruno has not been particularly known for supplying his strikers, though, has he? He aims for the wingers because it is easier that way, and that is how we are set up to attack. He is capable of the brilliant pass through the middle if the opponent team are playing a high defensive line, but he is not known for his ability in tight area or with little space, that is pretty well known. He didn't supply Ronaldo or Cavani much either with them making runs. Cavani has one of the best off-the-ball movements for a striker in the last 20 years, so don't really see why you would blame Højlund for that.
Rashford.Ronaldo, Martial & Cavani are not channel running strikers though.
Ronaldo was a poacher, Martial had one of the best hold up play ive ever seen & Cavani was also a striker preached for bringing others in to play than exactly breaking the offside trap and running in behind the defences as far as i remember.
Maybe i dont know what a channel running striker is - but i know that Martial & Ronaldo wasnt that.
If Rashford played as a ST do you think Hojlund or Rashford makes more runs in behind the defense?
Hojlund had no substantial talent to regress.
The thing is :
Bruno consistently finds Garnacho, Rashford & Amad making runs in behind the defence;
However Hojlund has no ability to make runs in behind the central defence as a striker & only ever does when the opposition defence has been completely opened and he is outsprinting a last defender.
That's what people aren't understanding, the things people are wanting from Hojlund in this thread are exactly the things he was doing well at Atalanta, we're just asking him to not do them here because that's not how the team is set up, if he goes back to doing what he did well at Atalanta under Amorim people will be singing a different tune, if he fails to do it then of course we move on to someone else. People are just not understanding at all how shit this team is and how it is not setup to play to Hojlund's strengths at all, infact i'm actually stunned we signed the guy for the role we've had him playing.That was exactly what he did at Atalanta though.
It's almost as if it's what people have been saying in this thread, Bruno consistently finds the WIDE players because the team is set up for them to get these runs at the defense whilst sacrificing the forward to help them do that. The set up is meant to get our wide players to score all the goals not the 9. Hojlund isn't making channel runs and so on because he's not being asked to play that way, the bulk of the heavy lifting is done by him, like battling defenders and keeping them busy and so on so the WIDE players can go do their thing, yet they are so unprolific we've found ourselves struggling for goals. How many times do the wide players cut inside and constantly shoot rather than cut across goal or cross. There's a reason why a lot of Hojlund's goals last season were of his own makingThe thing is :
Bruno consistently finds Garnacho, Rashford & Amad making runs in behind the defence;
However Hojlund has no ability to make runs in behind the central defence as a striker & only ever does when the opposition defence has been completely opened and he is outsprinting a last defender.
Many people say that Haaland would struggle here, but the fact is that Bruno would find Haaland make runs in behind the defence.
Hojlund in comparison is almost always grinding his arse on the defender and never making those killer runs that break the offside trap; so naming him as this "channel running striker" is very confusing because its arguably the least thing he does & the weakest of our front line at doing so whist playing with a very creative attacking midfielder right behind him.
Great post, and yeah I totally agree. Yeah in terms of his movement, the worrying thing is it's the type of thing you just have or you don't. It's not something that can be coached into a player per se as it's more a natural kind of instinct. We'll see what Amorim can do with him, but I suspect he won't be part of our squad in 2 years.I don't like to comment negatively on Hojlund because I have maintained from the beginning that it was terrible, terrible recruitment to have him lead the line and be the main guy at his age and level, but what is undeniable is that his reading of the game and play is actually shockingly bad.
He plays with no guile, craft or thought. Strikers, more so than anyone else on the pitch are supposed to be full of cunning, awareness and opportunism with the first steps in their head and everything else falling in line with that - it should be a doddle for a clever striker to bamboozle this level of opponent with his movement - either away or toward the ball - and look classes above just with the cuteness of his game. What we see with Hojlund is a player who is not able to outfox CB's, which is why he is so often pointlessly tussling with them, rather than leaving them in his vapour trail, distressed and het up that they can't get a read on him. It's a very bad sign when a striker is not able to shake low calibre defenders off literally at will - Rasmus should not look mostly lost and anonymous vs this level of opponent.
To compound the above, technically he is wildly erratic and unreliable in his: first touch, hold up play, passing and use of his body (shaping), which is going to play a hand in why others are wary of instinctively passing to him; if they don't believe he will have the ball stick, or use it well enough to be worthwhile using him in plays, they obviously will pick another option or simply go it themselves.
I personally think leading the line for us is really affecting him and what we're seeing is a poor reflection of the player due to his distressed state. When players/humans aren't doing so well, they seek familiarity and comfort and typically revert to type, and that'll be when coaching and drills go out the window. I reckon the kid is stuck in a terrible cycle there and it is getting to him.
Amorim is going to have to look at the player, his pros and cons, but more importantly, his psyche and what makes him tick and try and work with him from there to stop him doing what comes more naturally, which is being physical for the sake of it, rather than weaponising and understanding his own assets and advantages. His attributes need to be honed, sharpened and then fine tuned. Instead, what we're seeing is actually regressive - he's worse than the player he came here as. That, imo, is down to having a role at Atalanta that he understood and was fine with alongside teammates that understood and catered to his game. Here? He's in a much tougher league alongside players who don't cater to him in the slightest and it is resulting in the freestyle, poor improvisational mess that we're seeing. Some players do better without restriction because of their football intelligence, others, need the strictures and confines of the system to automate things and have them play a defined role in a predefined way... Hojlund is not the former and it is hindering his game and development that we don't have a way of playing that is going to extract the good and leave the bad to one side in his game.
He's just so raw, much rawer than should be signed unless talking about prodigious talent (like a young Martial) and he needs games away from the spotlight to develop and improve in a consummate way, where he is not micro analysed and under the intense burn of our spotlight for every game he plays. From the very start, he should have had a veteran striker ahead of him taking on the burden and brunt of goalscoring pressure and responsibility, with him getting the last 20 or so minutes of games - that, or a loan. It's simply ridiculous that we're in a predicament he is the only lead-the-line striker at the club. Even worse, we then buy in a not #9 to share the load with him... just shocking all round. Amorim is going to show some serious credentials if he can get a proper tune out of the player Hojlund is at this stage in his development. The kid is a 100m behind the 100m starting in line in a race where his foot needs to be on that starting line as a default. The champions of Greece are around middling Championship level, without insult, and it is games like those where he should be showing he's head and shoulders above in every key aspect, so these games are more concerning than PL ones because the PL won't give as many chances to show what kind of player you are if you're raw where games like this should.
Not signing Gyokeres if we have the opportunity to do so would be complete, utter madness.Likewise people who think we can solve every problem by splashing the cash. We can’t.
