Viktor Gyökeres - Sporting Striker

There are still other positions that will require signings though.

CB is obviously a key position in the system with us having to play three CBs in every game, and half our current CB options are out of contract this summer in the shape of Lindelof, Maguire and Evans. We will also likely need to strengthen further in midfield given Eriksen is also out of contract.

And that's assuming there aren't any other players he just doesn't rate enough and wants replaced as a priority, which is a pretty massive assumption. We could list half a dozen players a given manager might not rate for one reason or another.

Could be, that's not really the point I was making.
 
If you call crap depth then there’s nothing to discuss about.

The idea of depth is that if someone steps in for a first team player then the quality of the team doesn’t drop drastically.

Yes like when Evans and Maguire have this season.
We have Eriksen/Mainoo Ugate/Casemiro for the 2 midfield positions (not to mention Colleyer)
We have Holjlund and Rashford for the CF position (Rashford seems more suited to a channel running CF than Zirkzee and this is a major reason why I think we'll sign a new CF in the summer because Rashford is not a CF)
We have Garnacho/Amad Bruno/Zirkzee/Mount for the inside forwad/am positions (Zirkzee is more suited to this position in an Amorim setup than CF)
We have Dalot/Mazroui at RWB
we have an issue at LWB clearly
We have decent cover at CB but we could do with another signing here in Jan

You are making out its doom and gloom but its not, the squad is actually quite well suited. Obviously we need to increase the quality of the squad next summer and this Jan
 
I don't see it happening given we'd have to make sales first to make room.

It seems like the system he'll use here should see Hojlund get a lot more service. There's a good chance he shows we don't need a new striker. Rashford may also have to be the rotation option up front anyway.
 
I don't really see how he profiles any different to Hojlund to be honest - both have the physical size, athleticism and technical ability to enact as complete CFs in an Amorim system so it's not like United are in desperate need of a totally new type of striker.

Gyokeres might have been banging in goals for fun over the last few seasons but let's reminder ourselves this is A) in the Primeira Liga and the Championship and B) he's about 5 years further advanced in his development than Hojlund.

I do think you might need a different option in rotation as I'm not sure Zirkzee would be a great fit (although again, he's young and physically and technically would seem to be the part, but likely needs to remodel his natural game slightly), but Gyokeres would be a very expensive option in this regard.
 
Yes like when Evans and Maguire have this season.
We have Eriksen/Mainoo Ugate/Casemiro for the 2 midfield positions (not to mention Colleyer)
We have Holjlund and Rashford for the 2 CF positions
We have Garnacho/Amad Bruno/Zirkzee/Mount for the inside forwad/am positions
We have Dalot/Mazroui at RWB
we have an issue at LWB clearly
We have decent cover at CB but we could do with another signing here in Jan

You are making out its doom and gloom but its not, the squad is actually quite well suited
I’m not making it sound like doom or gloom so you can rest with the hyperboles. Just trying to have a discussion on a forum about squad depth and how much we can spend on a new signing.

I see our squad differently and apparently everyone is a quality player now that we have a new manager which is not true imo, a crap player remains crap. No player stepped up when Ole came in or when Ten Hag came in.

Soon we will be shipping off some players and hopefully for decent money so that we can get adequate replacements.

Again, that is my opinion. You don’t have to agree with it and you don’t have to attack anyone for having it.
 
I don't see it happening given we'd have to make sales first to make room.

It seems like the system he'll use here should see Hojlund get a lot more service. There's a good chance he shows we don't need a new striker. Rashford may also have to be the rotation option up front anyway.

Good thing the club is ambitious and wants to win the PL by 2028, if you think we'll do that relying on only one CF who can play in Amorims system then you're having a laugh
 
I’m not making it sound like doom or gloom so you can rest with the hyperboles. Just trying to have a discussion on a forum about squad depth and how much we can spend on a new signing.

I see our squad differently and apparently everyone is a quality player now that we have a new manager which is not true imo, a crap player remains crap. No player stepped up when Ole came in or when Ten Hag came in.

Soon we will be shipping off some players and hopefully for decent money so that we can get adequate replacements.

Again, that is my opinion. You don’t have to agree with it and you don’t have to attack anyone for having it.

And the players we brought in the summer are actually not crap. Also some of the players you called crap e.g Martinez are also clearly not crap
 
I'd rather wait to see what Amorim can do with Hojlund first.
Agreed. Amorim brought in gyökeres from a championship club made him into the the striker that has scoring 62 goals in 64 games, some of course will say it's only the Portuguese league while forgetting he has also scored for fun in Europe the last two seasons.
 
Agreed. Amorim brought in gyökeres from a championship club made him into the the striker that has scoring 62 goals in 64 games, some of course will say it's only the Portuguese league while forgetting he has also scored for fun in Europe the last two seasons.
Aside from pens, he's scored against Sturm Graz, Young Boys and Lille.

The goal against Lille was quality, to be fair... but it's not exactly dispelling the idea that the vast majority of his goals have come playing for a very good team against very bad teams - same as various other attackers who turned out to be bang average everywhere else who were putting up numbers for one of the big three in Portugal.
 
I think there's two questions here - a) is it the best use of our budget and b) is he good enough

On the latter question, I honestly don't know enough about him to say. If the club do all their data analytic sillyness and decide he's actually the real deal, then I can go with that.

However on the former, previously I would have always said no, and wanted to prioritise building out quality across the team. However I actually changed my mind due to how Klopp handled Liverpool's rebuild. He put all of their budget into attackers, bringing in Jota, Luiz, Nunez and Gakpo, before really addressing midfield. At the time I thought that was a mistake and thought he should focus on the spine of his team. In practice, their attacking quality kept them afloat throughout the rest of the rebuild.

While there's a good argument to be had that spunking much of our budget on a striker might be putting all our eggs in one basket, I think that a lack of goals has been such a debilitating issue for United that it would be better to prioritise goalscorers next summer, even if it meant putting a few 33 year olds on short term contracts and youth players on our bench for a season.
 
We have decent cover at CB but we could do with another signing here in Jan

Annoying, but true. Feels like we've been buying CBs every summer, still we end up having to buy another one next year. Obviously if we start playing 3 at the back its natural that we need more cover, but yeah, still feels bad.

With Martinez, De Ligt, Yoro and Maguire we got a fairly good setup there. Honestly Maguire is probably alot more suited for playing 3 at the back. There are certain CBs thats just a different player in 3-back systems compared to 2. Him in the middle might work out very well. Doubt he can play left/right CB in a 3-back formation.
 
Haven’t we had enough of our manager buying their former players from weaker leagues?
 
I don't think striker is the first option we need to fill, but it's far from our best position either. Hopefully Hojlund comes good but we should still have two good strikers anyway, and I just don't see it with Zirkzee - especially having read how Amorim likes his strikers to play.

Would be happy to sign Gyokeres, but wouldn't be surprised for us to focus on some more pressing positions over the next couple of transfer windows.
 
We clearly have a weaker pool of left backs to pick from than strikers but I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying left back's a bigger priority than striker for us.
We haven't fielded a left back since January.

Edit: 18th of February actually.
 
We haven't fielded a left back since January.

Edit: 18th of February actually.
Yeah, I'm familiar with that stat, it's grim :lol:

I think in a world where we can either spend money on decent left back or a decent striker, we should get the striker and loan a left back though.
 
Why can't we have both ? Its obvious Zirkzee won't be any more effective than Weghorst, so we will probably need two goal scorers at some point soon.
I'd rather not go down the rabbit hole of giving a manager 500 million so he can reform his old boys club again.

A good manager should come in with ideas for the current squad, rather than demand 3 or 4 new signings immediately.
 
may be too expensive for a rotation striker.

I think he is not world class yet either (more like Darwin Nunez level)