TheReligion
Abusive
Good post and I agree with much of it.I personally feel like he has lost his way in terms of identity on the pitch; he came here from a functioning team with a defined role and a clear idea of what he was expected to do - he was in a clear quid pro quo that was mutually beneficial and allowed him to focus on his precise job, taking a lot of the stress out of his game as well as variance that has entered the fray since he moved here to a club struggling to get any synergy going. We also have a lot more ego and self-serving players who are not really used to playing for the benefit of one another.
That’s a difficult environment for a very young striker to come into. Højlund has been hazed some by teammates and not really passed that test. By that I mean he had the ‘new lad who has to prove his credentials to his peers’ thing going on and in a world where Rashford has completely lost his way; Garnacho wants to be the second coming of C.Ronaldo (a me-me wing-forward); Antony is Antony and Bruno is way more erratic in pass selection than he was in his first two seasons, you have a real recipe for someone whose game is not solid and certain to lose themselves and their sense of identity.
We can all see he’s less than the player he came here as. The runs he makes now are far worse than those he used to make and his preoccupation with pointlessly wrestling and fighting with CB’s instead of trying to outfox them is getting worse the more his confidence drops, which I think is understandable because right now that’s probably the time when he feels alive and like he’s contributing to the team. If you actively seek to wrestle with CB’s you at least cannot be ignored and bypassed - without that physical connection he could be feeling like a complete passenger; he absolutely does not like or have that ‘none of it matters so long as I score’ indifference to general play of the Haaland/Gomez/ Hugo Sanchez kind of #9’s who literally couldn’t care less about the game going on around them so long as they get that 1 or 2 touch opportunity to score. At Atalanta he had a clear purpose and it meant he was more involved and what he did benefitted both he and the team. It’s been a 180 on a sliding scale since he got here unfortunately.
You mention the runs he does make that get ignored and you’re not wrong, but a striker who is confident and knows exactly who he is and what will best serve himself and the team will make countless runs of quality and at that time, players ignoring them will be in big trouble. Let me cite the very best off the ball runner in the last cycle of actual #9’s in Cavani. Not only was he renowned for his ability to run lines, but the sheer frequency of his desire to make another and another and another. The thing is, he was already the best at it, but the sheer volume of runs put him into the elite category for runs that you really need to dig deep in the crates for elite runners of the line that come close. Cavani was often ridiculed for his propensity to miss seemingly easy chances and he was regularly getting stick for that, but the sheer number of those chances were forged by his elite movement meant they were his right to miss as barely any other forward would have had the cunning to be in those positions in the first place. Cavani must have made tens of thousands of ignored runs in his career and the forage rate per times found with a pass that put him in/through would be a very interesting one and a bar by which we could even measure expected rate for strikers to be found by teammates. Point here is it’s part and parcel of being a striker and they get ignored a lot more times than they are found, but what their runs do in preamble is set up the chances they do get and that constant foraging is what mentally fatigues their markers. Also, making myriad runs is important in the figuring out of your markers and their habits and tendencies. This is the way elite runners start getting the drop on the defence; they’ve worked them out and that is the time split runs and bended rubs etc. go live and are all potentially lethal. It’s a systematic process and Højlund has no concept of it at the moment. His fighting doesn’t benefit him, in fact it tires him out and makes the likelihood of constantly foraging for space remote - he comes off absolutely exhausted at around 70min most games because of pointless, wasted energy.
I don’t think there’s much point citing his touch or even his shooting because that is bound to be erratic in a distressed player. We’ve seen some very good finishes and touches from him as well as lots of bad ones. I would put forward that there’s a correlation and the less confidence and identity he has, the worse all these things become. For me they are a distant second to his movement and understanding of why he should be doing things and when he should be doing things. Unfortunately for him, he’s also at Manchester United where you have to have nerve and steel with the self belief to believe you belong so that other egos and self-serving players don’t crush you, but instead have you show even more belief in yourself. Amorim may be able to generate a reset where players are in the team to serve the team first and foremost and not their own desires. Højlund would get the chance to completely reframe and rebuild his game then and hopefully rid himself of what are frankly terrible tendencies that are not sustainable at this level.
I do actually feel for him because these onset problems were obvious to many of us remonstrating about the club not protecting the player by having a veteran be the lead so all of these growing pains could have been methodically and quietly worked on. We should not be seeing all of this in real time under the glare of the spotlight from a global audience.
I think Amorim arriving will benefit him in a number of ways.
No it isn’t. Don’t be ridiculous. Professional footballers see a team mate in a dangerous position, ready to score an easy goal if they pass it to him and think… “nah, feck that guy…” Pull the other one.