This is such a weird selection of benchmarks. 3 absolute freaks of nature in terms of development and 2 that play in much worse leagues than Serie A.
Kane, Salah and even Osimhen weren't exactly tearing up trees at 20. We should be signing someone on an upward trajectory with the right profile, otherwise we're just going to get taken to the cleaners and have no money left to improve the overall squad. Players like Rashford, Greenwood and Garnacho only got better by playing in our first team at a young age, but weren't the finished article when they came in either.
What I personally think is weirder is only looking at goal stats to purely judge a player from when if you look at a lot of good players they tend to make jumps in pure numbers when they make the next step or just go to a better team... for example
Mo Salah had 34 goals in 83 matches for Roma, pretty good but that's still lower than a goal every other game, 19 goals in 41 matches in his last season before joining Liverpool, but then first season at Liverpool he gets 44 goals in 52 games, who on earth would have thought he'd produce that output if you only focus purely on his goalscoring exploits from the previous season and Liverpool took a chance on him
Harry Kane's goal output was absolutely abysmal, worse than Hojlund's at his age, 2 goals in 15 apps for Leicester then 4 goals in 19 apps for Tottenham, then the next season, his first proper season with Tottenham he bags 31 goals in 51 games and the rest is history, infact they were close to selling him I believe?
This isn't to say Hojlund will reach the heights of any of these players but he clearly has the attributes to, the "but he's only scored 9 goals this season and we need a 30 goal a season striker minimum!" doesn't hold weight with me because there's nothing to say he can't come in and score 30 goals, there's also nothing to say we sign a striker like Harry Kane and he flops, unlikely but we just don't know.
What I do know is I'm sick and tired of being a team that waits for young plays like Hojlund to be snapped up by a big team that wants to take a chance them and then watching them flourish for our biggest rivals in Europe or us being the team that's constantly trying to prize them away for an obscene amount of money when we could have had them for peanuts prior