That is 5 less goals than Havertz, Jesus, Martinelli, and Saka combined. Then again, Arsenal are 2nd.
Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) are here to discuss three 1-1 draws.
The first got us knocked out of the FA Cup, the next puts us in a good position in our Round of 16 Europa League game, and the latest was an actual decent performance against Arsenal at Old Trafford.
All hopes for the season now rest on the Europa League - does Amorim have the squad to win it?
Its funny that its only at United do players come from other leagues and fail...
Also, you make it sound that players that come from the PL do well with us? Which again isn't true because they struggle at United after being good elsewhere.
I mean using reactionary fan sentiment as the basis for "oh these players are actually good" doesn't make any sense though.
By all accounts our squad ISN'T good enough to be 6th or 7th, especially in the shape it's currently in. You can literally go through the teams in the table from top to bottom and the majority of them have better quality going forward than we do. Add that to us being very error prone at the back and it's a recipe for leaking goals and squandering points left and right.
I was actually referring to Garnacho. Bruno has arguably been our best player under Amorim so I don't see why he'd sell him.
You've not listed all of their forwards though and that's 4 players compared to the 5 I listed. If you add in Trossard and Nwaneri then that's another 7 goals. Bringing Arsenals quota up to 30 goals compared to our tally of 18 goals. It's a pretty big difference. We all have eyes, we've all unfortunately had to watch the last 2/3 seasons of woeful attacking quality. We all should know that we've got a very weak attack.
Here's a combined table since our League Cup win against Newcastle. This is when Rashfords purple run of form ended and when our attack officially failed. I've removed clubs that have been promoted/relegated since then to keep a consistent group who have played the same number of games. I've sorted the table by GF.
Rank | Club | Games | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1st | Liverpool | 81 | 53 | 21 | 7 | 189 | 86 | 103 |
2nd | Man City | 78 | 53 | 13 | 12 | 179 | 79 | 100 |
3rd | Arsenal | 79 | 50 | 17 | 11 | 178 | 72 | 106 |
4th | Newcastle | 80 | 39 | 14 | 26 | 164 | 118 | 46 |
5th | Tottenham | 78 | 34 | 12 | 32 | 151 | 128 | 23 |
6th | Chelsea | 79 | 34 | 19 | 25 | 144 | 121 | 23 |
7th | Aston Villa | 80 | 39 | 20 | 20 | 137 | 114 | 23 |
8th | Brighton | 81 | 29 | 25 | 25 | 132 | 125 | 7 |
9th | Brentford | 80 | 27 | 17 | 35 | 125 | 124 | 1 |
10th | Bournemouth | 79 | 31 | 16 | 31 | 114 | 122 | -8 |
11th | Fulham | 78 | 28 | 18 | 32 | 114 | 119 | -5 |
12th | Nottm Forest | 79 | 26 | 19 | 33 | 113 | 126 | -13 |
13th | West Ham | 79 | 28 | 18 | 32 | 111 | 147 | -36 |
14th | Crystal Palace | 79 | 27 | 22 | 29 | 111 | 109 | 2 |
15th | Man Utd | 79 | 35 | 14 | 30 | 107 | 112 | -5 |
16th | Wolves | 79 | 24 | 13 | 41 | 100 | 146 | -46 |
17th | Everton | 79 | 23 | 26 | 29 | 87 | 110 | -23 |
TLDR: Our forward line is genuinely atrocious.
I'm a bit ill today but I cannot think of many pl players we got recently aside from Maguire who didn't improve or get worse.
And no it happens to other clubs as well, just more for us due to our amazingly poor recruitment.
It's probably the worst in the PL. Bar Amad I would have no problem replacing each and everyone of them. Including Garnacho.
Going to have to challenge this, or at least ask for some convincing. We spent 3 years replacing the old team with their worse versions. Forget being PL winning caliber, these guys aren't even PL playing caliber. The idea of Hojlund, Zirkzee, Onana and co are better than the actual players. Mentally speaking, Hojlund and Zirkzee make the likes of Martial look like Cantona. Onana is now doing his best to make final season De Gea look like a decent keeper.
I am getting worried that we missed our best offer for Garnacho, his value might drop
Yeah I think most of these players could be part of a top 4/6 team but we don't have the actual match winners. You don't need a full team of excellent players but you do need some.
If our striker had even 10 goals by this point we'd be up around Newcastle, Chelsea, Bournemouth. It's such a massive hindrance to our results.
I don't disagree that United have a weak attacking roster right now.
But a lot of the discussion about squad quality ends up being based on league position / current performance, which ends up eliminating influence of manager, tactics, form, etc.
Good on Chris Wood for scoring 18 goals. Nottingham Forest are 3rd. But surely nobody believes they are the 3rd or 4th or 5th squad in the PL.
Arsenal have been 2nd in the PL the last three seasons even though their strikers are not really at that top top level, but they are a well-drilled team, hence they score goals.
Exactly.. One could argue that we were lucky not to lose by 7 more times the amount of chances and shots we conceded in most games. The 3-0 loss to Liverpool this season could've easily been 7 if Liverpool had their shooting boots, so could the Tottenham 3-0, and the Palace 4-0 last season.
Doesn't fit the anti Amorim narrative that we were more solid with 4 at the back.
Last season, despite a huge injury crisis, 8th place was catastrophic. This season, with a better squad and less injuries, we aren‘t good enough for top ten.
The Caf at its finest.
The Caf at its finest.
There are people on here who genuinely believe Forrest have a better squad than us and want Elanga to replace Garnacho in the 10.
You'd have a point if our players were known to be consistent goal scorers but having a poor season. In the case it would be a finger pointing at Manager, Tactics etc.
But this has been an issue for 80 odd games now with 2 different Managers. Rashford is our only top goal scorer at United (he's not even here now), but despite being 27 years old and having played at United as a first teamer since he was 17/18. He's only scored higher than 12 goals twice. Bruno is consistent and gives a solid 10 goal output. All our other options are incosistent kids with dubious ability. Again, anyone that has watched our matches for the past 2 years should know that we have zero natural goal scorers and been toothless during that period. Clearly demonstrated by stats and the basic eye test. Most forwards in the PL would at the very least be squad players here if not starters. The decline in our forward lineup has been catastrophic.
I think it's very clearly down to our attacking players being kids and some simply not being good enough for this level and we don't have the depth to be able to try different selections. Resulting in these kids being tired as well as having poor ability which is a bad mix. Put Hojlund in a weaker league in a setup that suits his ability and i'm sure he'd start scoring goals again, but at this point in his career he is not cut out for this level of opposition. Zirkzee is improving slowly but as of now he is toothless, ok at holding onto the ball and linking up play but abysmal in the final third. Garnacho is inconsistent in everything he does and is not a natural goal scorer, but he is a danger at least. Diallo is the only one who has shown genuine quality.
For what its worth never have put the kids in this position either. As a club we should have senior players taking the responsibility and pressure burden.
Who's said that?
Exactly. This squad is currently playing at 40% of its capabilities, either because of bad caching motivation or formation. Squad was good enough when we beat City wasn't it. When Southampton bullied us, suddenly the squad is crap.
Hobbers and Gandalf.
good combination that
There's judging the squad and there's judging manager expectations as it relates to the squad he inherited. What happened last season has nothing to do with him. This season he inherited a 14th place team that lost several attackers, so no, people are not pressed that he doesn't have them top 10. What the hell kind of expectation is top 10 anyway? Midtable is midtable. It doesn't matter if you have 3 extra points on Brentford or Palace. We stop the table metrics race and start building for next season.
8th place was not catastrophic. It was lucky beyond imagination.
A certain Brentford away game comes to mind, where we somehow got away with 1-1 draw when it should have been 5-1.
Not to mention McTominay saving us at OT in last second.
Wolves win where Onana got away with murder. Or Mainoo last second winner.
We were 14th to 16th on every stat. 8th was using up all our luck for years to come.
And again - no matter how much we improve defensive or mid players, without a goalscorer and good keeper, we will struggle to win any game.
Is the forward line better this season or last?
Our forward line is not good enough, but everything is tied together. As one example, we have struggled for a long time to transport the ball forward to the attacking players. It looks like we have tried hard for some time to figure out how to play out from the back. We just suck at it and opponents can cause us a lot of damage by pressing us well. Our team also seem to lack belief so we rarely push players forward when we attack. Making it more difficult for our attackers to do something. It is a lot of different things that contribute to our terrible stats
We are good enough to finish 4th-8th in my opinion. Amorim is definitely underperforming, as was Ten Hag this season. Ten Hag might have turned it around, while I‘m not seeing any good signs under Amorim.
I‘m glad we won against Ipswich, but all it was, was avoiding an embarrassment.
If Amorim wants to experiment the remaining games, I‘m fine with it. I don‘t want to see the same ineffective shit any longer though.
Whilst its all well and good doing this, I am sure you are aware at the start of the last season where almost 8/10 opening games we had, we had alot of poor refereeing decisions.
Whilst we were conceding 20+ shots, we also lost points in similar ways.
When most united fans say rebuild, we mean getting rid of glazers. If it means a few seasons down under, so be it.
Garnacho/Højlund/Amad is the best line up, it was last season as well. It sucks we lost Amad.
No no no, you're doing football wrong. You have to read numbers not watch the game.
You are not mentioning the decisions that went against us, of which there were plenty.
Over 38 games, you don‘t finish where you do because of luck, that‘s bollocks.
In a 4-3-3 mid press with zirkzee as a false 9 and Rashford and Amad playing as genuine wide forwards, Rashford and Amad would probably both get towards 20 league goals, even replacing one with garnacho he would probably get 10-15.
Definitely make a run for top 4 with that set up.
Nah, don't see it!
The forward line is an issue and there's been a clear overall drop off since March 2023 where the Rashford purple patch ended and Casemiro ran out of gas. However, we still won enough games by the odd goal to finish top 3 at the end of that season.
The major drop off since August 2023, which has seen us go from battling top 4 every year to genuine midtable crap, has been because of the goalkeeper we signed. We now can barley nick games anymore as the keeper isn't saving us late on like he used to, and in fact, he's actively throwing games in the other teams favour with huge blunders at a remarkable rate you wouldn't even have thought Taibi was capable of. A striker is incredibly important, but I'd argue getting a good goalkeeper is where the manager should start. Start with the most important foundation.
The major drop off since August 2023, which has seen us go from battling top 4 every year to genuine midtable crap, has been because of the goalkeeper we signed. We now can barley nick games anymore as the keeper isn't saving us late on like he used to, and in fact, he's actively throwing games in the other teams favour with huge blunders at a remarkable rate you wouldn't even have thought Taibi was capable of. A striker is incredibly important, but I'd argue getting a good goalkeeper is where the manager should start. Start with the most important foundation.
United have scored 58 and 57 goals in the last two seasons, which I agree is not a very good number, especially when you compare them to the top of the table, the teams that compete for the title.
But compared to the rest of the Premier League it's not an unusual number. I've looked at the goals scored by teams #5 to #16 in the PL in this period. In 22/23 the average was 62 ± 6. In 23/24 the average was 51 ± 15. United's goal tally fits within that average ± standard deviation. If United have been toothless in this period then statistically you could claim the same about a big chunk of the PL. This raises the question of how bad can United's squad be relative to the rest of the PL.
It is really only this season that United's goalscoring record is way down (they currently rank 15th) so it does raise the question of whether the manager/system has something to do with it. Last two seasons they were 7th and 9th (which was good for 3rd and 8th).
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i don't think that is honestly the case based on form and effort alone....in essence you are talking about setting up defensively in a 424
Erm Rashford has played that position for number of years under various managers and NEVER hit 20 league goals, so I think that statement is false.
Which is precisely what most of us are saying. We are a mid table team. That's the reality. We were carried by being slightly more organised in defense and that is where our current strength is even with the atrocious Onana in goal.
The poster said towards which insinuates that he expects them to be close but not necessarily at that figure. Rashford scored 17 league goals twice which in theroy supports the point made by @Longshanks.
Yeah 2 in 10 seasons. Not really something you can say he will get there. Amad has never had 10 PL goals either.