Sounds like he should be a center back.
9
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 22
- Goals
- 7
- Assists
- 1
- Yellow cards
- 1
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran discuss a horrific month of December and a depressing FOUR defeats in a row - the latest coming against Wolves and Newcastle.
They discuss how much blame is on Ruben Amorim and rank our squad against other Premier League teams.
Do we have any chance of avoiding defeat at Anfield?
Sounds like he should be a center back.
He should be honing these supposed ingredients on loan really. We keep overpaying for raw talents and then thrusting then on to a stage they aren’t and may never be good enough for. It’s better to buy these maybe talents cheaper so you don’t put unnecessary pressure on then to perform and the club to play them. It’s only the “dead cert” (or near enough) players for big money - you know, players whose gift is clear to the naked / layman eye.
Strong - we rarely see that, he's consistently outmuscled by defenders.
Tall - not worth a f**k because we rarely if ever see him win any headers. Has he scored any headed goals for us ever?
Combative - yeah, if you count getting into wrestling matches with defenders and ending up on your arse as "combative".
Fast - he seems to have decent pace over 20 - 30 yards but we hardly ever see it. Over 5 - 10 yards he's not particularly fast.
So is Antony Joshua.
A forward needs a lot more than that to be scoring goals regularly
If we were looking at Gyokeres then I'd genuinely include a loan to Sporting as part of the deal. He'd do well in an easier league and the confidence he'd get from a decent scoring season would do him wonders. Could be used to drive the Gyokeres price down without having to sell a lad who had promise
I also think he would develop a lot from a loan to a league that fits his current level.
But he doesn’t have skill, technique or any quality whatsoever.
Yet he's scored a bunch of goals that require technique and quality, so it's wrong to say whatsoever. You could maybe say he doesn't have nearly enough consistency in these traits yet, which is fair.
Agree 100%.
From Cole/Yorke/Sheringham/Solskjaer and Ronaldo/Rooney/Tevez/Saha to Hojlund/Zirkzee? How have we come to this? Paying well over the odds for unproven potential. I curse the day those carpetbaggers the Glazers waltzed into our club.
You can be the real deal at a young age - we got Rooney at 18.Hojlund is not.
Terrible first touch; always backing into the defender and invariably wrestling him to the ground; questionable movement and can't hold up his trousers.
He should be in the 23s or out on loan. I actually feel sorry for the lad. Ultimately not his fault he's ended up at a dysfunctional club, thanks to the carpetbaggers and now Brexit Jim.
PS: Jury still out on the Special One Tactico.
And who would be back up to Gyokeres?
I see a good player developing in him and I even think he's been good this season. He's gotten better at receiving the ball under pressure without losing it and passing it on. His numbers might not show it, but from the eyetest I thnk he's adjusting to the league and has also showed more involvement and better passing, setting up other players to miss a good amount of chances recently.
He's been more involved this season, albeit still not getting much service/end product. He's still missing that ability to be at the right place at the right time. Not sure if it can be trained, but it's also a result of how well a team is playing overall/how little we're creating with space for him, with others attracting defenders, etc.
Times might be dark, but I think he's at least developing as he should (under terrible circumstances). He should only be compared to how far strikers at his age are in development, not compared to Kane, Lewandowski, Haaland, etc. There's just not many strikers out there doing better at age 21 these days. They mostly blossom around age 25 it seems, and I'd still say Højlund could be performing at a high level at 25 too.
It certainly feels weird to not get into all the doom and gloom with every player on here, but he's just not the right player to scapegoat imo. His development will take time though, and he does need consistent game time to improve, so another mature striker to carry the load would be greatly appreciated. Cunha would be the guy for me who can both play as a left-10 and cover/provide competition for Højlund as the striker. Gyokeres too, but he seems too expensive.
He's been more involved this season, albeit still not getting much service/end product. He's still missing that ability to be at the right place at the right time. Not sure if it can be trained, but it's also a result of how well a team is playing overall/how little we're creating with space for him, with others attracting defenders, etc.
Times might be dark, but I think he's at least developing as he should (under terrible circumstances). He should only be compared to how far strikers at his age are in development, not compared to Kane, Lewandowski, Haaland, etc. There's just not many strikers out there doing better at age 21 these days. They mostly blossom around age 25 it seems, and I'd still say Højlund could be performing at a high level at 25 too.
It certainly feels weird to not get into all the doom and gloom with every player on here, but he's just not the right player to scapegoat imo. His development will take time though, and he does need consistent game time to improve, so another mature striker to carry the load would be greatly appreciated. Cunha would be the guy for me who can both play as a left-10 and cover/provide competition for Højlund as the striker. Gyokeres too, but he seems too expensive.
I hope we dont play him against Liverpool as it's like we are playing with only 10 men when he is on the pitch in games like this as he contributes nothing
A bit strange to conclude considering how much he showed against City. Should've gotten a penalty + Played Bruno through for a one-on-one.
Who else can we play? Zirkzee is even worse, Rashford seems frozen and we don’t have another player who’s ever played at 9.
I mean I’d probably just stick Garnacho in there to make runs if we are to play on a counter but that would require formation to be altered which I don’t think is something Amorim is willing to currently entertain.
Yeah, I'd actually rather we play a system without a striker than play Rasmus or Zirkee up front
We could put Chido Obi-Martin in there and he would probably contribute more than Hojlund will
Clearly not a watcher of the youth teams. Chido is not even close to ready and is not physically up to playing senior football at this point.
I don’t think this would be a good move. Hojlund is absolutely horrendous but Martin is a youngster who’s probably not physically ready yet. It would be bad for his development to throw him in there.
Maguire up front would be better at this stage.
Rasmus needs some games in the reserved to find his shooting boots.
Still hoping he can come good and be consistent.
Rasmus needs some games in the reserved to find his shooting boots.
Still hoping he can come good and be consistent.
This
no one im i am honest,, however it doesnt take anything away from the fact that this move was a recruitment disaster. 72 million down the drain.
Funny how everyone was excited when this kid joined, seemed pretty happy with him after his debut season and now suddenly he's terrible and at 21 should be written off and won't ever be good enough.
It's like you've all forgotten how bad the rest of the team is playing around him. You could put Haaland up don't in this side and he'd probably do feck all as well.
It's like you've all forgotten how bad the rest of the team is playing around him. You could put Haaland up don't in this side and he'd probably do feck all as well.
Yes, a forward also needs a great finishing, which Hojlund has.
He's got a lot of potential in him, what we saw last season and in pre season before his injuries. He obviously arrived here too early in his career, fans need to give him a bit of breathing space until our strongest starting XI has settled and isn't constantly being meddled with.
He obviously has talent. He scores 5 goals in 6 starts CL and 5 EL goals in 3 starts / 3 cameo from bench which shows his potential. Unfortunately, he’s not ready for PL especially to be starter. For someone who is not blessed being a technical player, he will need more time to adjust because he needs to improve his first touch, his strength, and his balance to not get bullied by PL defenders. He got good shooting technique and the guy can score any kind of shots with both feet, long distance, short distance, first time shot, and blasting it with power like what he did vs Spurs.
The big money fees was the wrong investment because you don’t spend that kind of money for prospect striker who is not ready to start for the league games.
I wonder what the club is going to do, either they trust Hojlund again to be our main no 9 and improve the positions behind him and hoping Hojlund will improve with better players around him. Or we invest another big money on unproven PL striker.
Lot of strikers who score goals are expensive now means no sale value if we buy the wrong one again. And the available ones aren’t even PL proven so the high transfer fees makes it even high risk.
The big money fees was the wrong investment because you don’t spend that kind of money for prospect striker who is not ready to start for the league games.
I wonder what the club is going to do, either they trust Hojlund again to be our main no 9 and improve the positions behind him and hoping Hojlund will improve with better players around him. Or we invest another big money on unproven PL striker.
Lot of strikers who score goals are expensive now means no sale value if we buy the wrong one again. And the available ones aren’t even PL proven so the high transfer fees makes it even high risk.
Has potential but I'm not impressed by him at all so far. I don't see any world class attributes in his game. He can carry the ball well when running, but he's not an instinctive player who can read the game well. He has a great physique for a guy his age, but never uses it to his advantage, which again underlines his lack of football IQ. I think that if we had two great forwards either side of him right now, that he would stand out like a sore thumb next to them. Happy to be proved wrong of course. Don't think I will though.
The poster above mentioned he needs to improve his first touch. You either have it or you don't. It can't be coached into you.
The poster above mentioned he needs to improve his first touch. You either have it or you don't. It can't be coached into you.
In the form City are currently in they're legitimately among the worst clubs in the PL and in the CL. Liverpool represents a massive challenge for us. I'm not filled with confidence that Hojlund will rise to the occasion based on his performances against quality teams
Hojlund is the opposite of what you just said. He’s not powerful and weak (or at least not yet), that’s why he’s getting bullied easily. He plays without technical ability to control the ball in tight space. Without it, he will need to rely on his strength, which something he is doing right now and that’s why we see him wrestling defenders too much but he keep getting outmuscled by them.
Sorry, that's absolutely not the case, and there's a whole transfer thread of proof that this signing carried a lot of uncertainty with it as well as a load of prescient posts about him not being ready to be the leading man at a club like ours, but as an understudy with potential for the future, the same posters were OK with him coming in.
Saying there was blanket excitement is a distortion of the reality that his thread prior to even getting here is riddled with. There was cautious optimism and obvious happiness that, apparently, we finally had recruiters we could trust - 'football men' - who could pick out supreme talent for the future. That's where euphoric leanings would come in; a blind hope that our new guys were so much better than the old ones that faith could be placed in their hands. You're always going to have a certain amount of delight at new signings/things coming in, but some carry a lot more doubt than others, even if that gets drowned out by the positivity of not seeing a player or recruitment team in action before cheerleading for them.
I'm not shitting on the player here, but there were so many posts warning against exactly what has materialised that it cannot be swept under the rug. Those posters voiced concern and were so spot on it makes those paid enormous sums of money to get our house in order look utterly inept. Those who are supposed to safeguard both the club and the player left him - and us - in the lurch by piling on responsibility and a role he was, evidently, nowhere near ready for. That a whole load of randoms on the internet could say they warned of exactly this beforehand is actually alarming because those that are supposed to be professionals should be light years ahead in assessment to the point they don't feck up and cost the club 10's of millions a pop, yet they've left us in the hole to the tune of well over half a billion pounds in godawful recruitment. That is objectively awful. Just awful. And it keeps happening - they keep making poor signings for the most part.
The stance with Hojlund rarely changes and most say he's raw and shouldn't have this kind of burden on him. Some want him sold, some want him to be understudy to a main man and others would be happy to see him loaned to round out and improve his game, but what we all know, even the majority who are behind him, is that he isn't ready to be the leading striker here and something needs to be done about that immediately.
There's been a rather massive swing of late because we're in a position precarious enough for relegation talk and threads to be pumped out with consistency. With that comes uptake in urgency for someone to come in and deliver "main man" performances that get us back to mid table mediocrity in the meantime and have us bemoan just being our usual level of bad and not this level where relegation talk has any legs whatsoever. If we're talking alarm bells, they're starting to rattle a bit now and people are getting antsy, frustrated and some are genuinely of the belief we could get relegated. You can see why, under such circumstances, watching a very raw and undercooked main man look questionable as a PL-level performer is going to amass posts of discontent.
It's really unprecedented in my lifetime that a United strikeforce can be compared directly to relegation fodder, and yet that's what we have right now. People are able to ask how the likes of Ipswich's main man are better than what we have. They have a #9 who looks better than our own. It can be fluffed up and talked around in many ways, but watching Liam Delap and then watching Hojlund, it is clear who is the superior PL-level talent at this precise moment in time. Without a hint of arrogance, questions have to be asked of how the winningest PL institution, who spend 100's of millions on players, is in a position where its strikeforce is in competition with relegation candidates for worst in the league. Hojlund, Zirkzee, Antony, Rashford and Garnacho have a sum total of goals between them that is alarming. Amad's position keeps getting dicked around with so it's debatable whether he should even be classed as a forward when so much has come from him dumped at wingback.
Anyway, I digress, and this post could continue to highlight our woes and legitimate concerns, but even with well meaning hope for the future Hojlund, there's simply no grounds to state what he's putting forth is adequate, whether the team is flailing as a unit or not. As an individual, a PL striker of any merit does a lot more. Liam Delap isn't even the benchmark of expectation for a PL striker that the likes of us would be eyeing up for the future, and yet there's no doubt there's a chasm between he and Hojlund right now, or are you saying we're even bereft compared to Ipswich? Cunha is another, who whilst not a striker, you see performance level in that you immediately understand has value to it, enough to interest top clubs in the division. If we offered a swap of our #9 for Delap or Cunha, do you think they'd take it? If Hojlund was in the predicament of either player, would he outdo them? This, and a plethora of other really obvious, and painfully clear questions can be asked that wouldn't come out favourably for our young Dane. We're in a SOS state for good reason.
Many posters on here raised concerns about this at the time of the transfer, warning that he might not be ready to lead the line just yet. While others, including me believed he was bought with the future in mind and expected the club to pair him with an experienced player he could learn from. As for your second point, it's something I often read here. Firstly, it's clear he is not on the same level as Haaland, and it's reasonable to expect Haaland would achieve more. Suggesting otherwise seems a bit far-fetched putting it nicely. Secondly, Hojlund's struggles are not limited to United, his performances for the national squad and throughout the Euros have also been underwhelming. So, it's not entirely correct to place all the blame on his teammates for his current form. If he’s struggling both for us and his national team, isn’t it possible that he might also be part of the problem?
I also have to agree with @Fortitude that this is the weakest attack we’ve had in a very long time, and Hojlund is a key part of it. It’s no coincidence that we’re likely to finish with a negative goal difference for the second season in a row and that we’re scoring 30-40 goals fewer than the top teams in the league. That being said, I don’t blame Hojlund for any of this. He puts in a lot of effort, and it’s not his fault that he isn’t ready to be a first-choice striker yet. He needs time to develop and grow into that role. But to constantly read that his struggles are blamed on his team-mates is getting tiring.
Last edited:
Strong? He is bullied and pushed by most of defenders in PL so saying that he is strong is a nonsense.
Tall? Guy literally can't win a header.
Fast? Is he really?
So, what is left? He is combative. So was Wout Weghorst.
And btw, how exactly being combative, strong and tall are ingredients for goal maschine?
i keep hearing that if we had bought an experienced striker things would have worked out for him. Buying an experienced striker isn't going to hold hojlunds hand and make him a better player the same way bringing in Ruud didnt make him better neither Amorim or changing systems or taking rashford or garnacho out of the team who were getting blamed for not finding him. He will never be the required standard to be a united player unless we wish to keep him just so he can score against lower level opposition
I've seen far better players get meme'd and clowned for far less but this guy gets so protected it's unbelievable. Whether he plays for Denmark or under mutiple managers under different systems they are not going to hide the basic fundamental flaws he displays every game
I've seen far better players get meme'd and clowned for far less but this guy gets so protected it's unbelievable. Whether he plays for Denmark or under mutiple managers under different systems they are not going to hide the basic fundamental flaws he displays every game
Yeah he's definitely fast, he is tall too. He also looks strong, but isn't.
He's not very good though, right now at least.
70m should get you the finished article or a generational talent. Höjlund is neither.
maybe I'm deluded but I feel the criticism here is very harsh. it's not his fault he was purchased for United taxes money. he has shown great potential towards being the finished article and if he was in a side creating more opportunities we'd all be raving about him. I for one have total faith there is a great player in there. also he's bound to be short on confidence with our current set up