We don't have an attacker capable of scoring 20 goals this sesaon

Chicharito_

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Title says it all, out of the top clubs in the league we have the worst forwards/wingers by a distance. The only player capable you would say is Rashford because he has done it before but going by the past year it looks like he has no chance, compare this to other top clubs in the league:

City - Haaland, Foden
Liverpool - Salah, Jota
Tottenham - Son, Solanke
Arsenal - Saka, Havertz
Villa - Watkins
Newcastle - Isak

If you look at front 3s then I wouldn't pick Uniteds over any of the above teams either and without that individual quality you are going to struggle.
 
Toney is available but we don't seem interested. We need to hope Hojlund makes a big step forward when he comes back but I'm not convinced.
 
I would go as far to say as there are 8 teams with better front 3's than ours in the league.
 
BristolRuss said:
Toney is available but we don't seem interested. We need to hope Hojlund makes a big step forward when he comes back but I'm not convinced.
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Toney has scored 27 premier league goals from open play in 3 years.

I don't think big money on 28 year old who's just decent is the answer unfortunately.

Ultimately, if we were signing a striker it would have been instead of Zirkzee, not as well as. That ship has sailed.
 
We don’t have one capable of more than 10, really.

Lack of goalscorers + our inability to create chances = the reason why we haven’t hit past 60 goals for three seasons
 
We've banked on Rashford getting back to his form two seasons ago and Garnacho and Hojlund developing further and getting better goal returns. I'm not convinced it will be enough at all.
 
Irwin99 said:
We've banked on Rashford getting back to his form two seasons ago and Garnacho and Hojlund developing further. I'm not convinced it will be enough at all.
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Yes, we've been let down by Rashford not stepping up while other players develop.

Thats football, it happens and we've also misinvested in Sancho and Antony so not just him, so we have to eat shit and face the consequences of those bad decisions until there is a breakthrough
 
We don’t have a proven goalscorer, we don’t have a left back. We don’t have a DM either really.

I’d say the biggest issue is still in midfield, we are at least two short there and even if we signed Toney or someone I’d imagine he’d struggle as we will consistently lose the midfield battle.
 
Reading his performance thread last season you would think Hojlund is more than good enough.
 
It’s not just about goal scorer - we don’t have any great attackers full stop. They’re all hopeful talents or struggling players. The wide players today were shockingly bad.
 
Feels like ETH's job depends on the young players taking the next step, but it's definitely not a given.

It was another time and a more dominant team, but when Fergie was in charge it felt like we always focused on having strong attackers in the team more than anything else. Even when we had dependable scorers we would push to improve. When we bought Ruud, RVP, Yorke and so on we already had other dependable goal scorers in the squad, but always tried to push for more goals. Currently we haven't got a single one and I hope we can scrape top 4 with this team and go all out with attacking signings next window depending on which of the younger players actually steps up (or not).
 
Chicharito_ said:
Title says it all, out of the top clubs in the league we have the worst forwards/wingers by a distance. The only player capable you would say is Rashford because he has done it before but going by the past year it looks like he has no chance, compare this to other top clubs in the league:

City - Haaland, Foden
Liverpool - Salah, Jota
Tottenham - Son, Solanke
Arsenal - Saka, Havertz
Villa - Watkins
Newcastle - Isak

If you look at front 3s then I wouldn't pick Uniteds over any of the above teams either and without that individual quality you are going to struggle.
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We don't even play a front three with this current system bro.
 
Amar__ said:
Reading his performance thread last season you would think Hojlund is more than good enough.
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We can't even get him on the fecking pitch to see if he's good enough, he's injury prone as feck
 
Freak said:
What’s the point when the rest of the team don’t create anything for them?
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A crucial point underlooked, the comparison between other top teams in the league by player quality is nonchalant they play under significantly better coaches with significantly better systems.

Remember Hojlund overperformed last season by metrics of chances created for him, having a prolific striker does very little when the nuances of getting clear cut opportunities has been an issue for three consecutive seasons.
 
Chicharito_ said:
Title says it all, out of the top clubs in the league we have the worst forwards/wingers by a distance. The only player capable you would say is Rashford because he has done it before but going by the past year it looks like he has no chance, compare this to other top clubs in the league:

City - Haaland, Foden
Liverpool - Salah, Jota
Tottenham - Son, Solanke
Arsenal - Saka, Havertz
Villa - Watkins
Newcastle - Isak

If you look at front 3s then I wouldn't pick Uniteds over any of the above teams either and without that individual quality you are going to struggle.
Click to expand...

Hojlund scored league goals from open play at a better rate than Saka & Havertz last season. And both Solanke & Son only scored 0.04 goals per 90 more than him, the equivalent of one and a half extra goals if they played 38 full 90's.

I get the general point you're making, but don't let being on penalties and availability exaggerate the difference in returns when these players are actually on the pitch.
 
Redstain said:
A crucial point underlooked, the comparison between other top teams in the league by player quality is nonchalant they play under significantly better coaches with significantly better systems.

Remember Hojlund overperformed last season by metrics of chances created for him, having a prolific striker does very little when the nuances of getting clear cut opportunities has been an issue for three consecutive seasons.
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I grew tired of making this point so just gave it up. SO much of our build up play ends up with our wingers in the promising positions, therefore you need quality end product from them otherwise your strikers basically won't ever bag goals. I think Amad will help with this (even in a shit game today he scored an excellent goal and created another quality chance), but Rashford is basically a 0 if he isn't finishing anything and that means your attack will always be inconsistent because we don't seemingly have any drilled final third passages of play; it's all off the cuff (which is great if you have Real Madrid's attackers but not so much with ours).
 
The false nine doesn't work especially with the way we play it. We rely to much on wide players and without a proper forward in the box to aim for it's very unfair on them.
 
Freak said:
What’s the point when the rest of the team don’t create anything for them?
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But some of that will come down to the striker themselves. Their movement, positioning etc. Obviously an inexperience thing.

You can't convince me that if you put Haaland, Palmer, Toney, Isak etc in this team they'd get 10 or less in a season.
 
sullydnl said:
Hojlund scored league goals from open play at a better rate than Saka & Havertz last season. And both Solanke & Son only scored 0.04 goals per 90 more than him, the equivalent of one and a half extra goals if they played 38 full 90's.

I get the general point you're making, but don't let being on penalties and availability exaggerate the difference in returns when these players are actually on the pitch.
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On Havertz I kind of agree but it feels like Saka creates half his chances himself and then an additional couple for the other Arsenal forwards. We have no one like that, and we could use those skills very much. Currently our best hope is Garnacho staying on his current development path.
 
We have Bruno and Rashford who can, although Rashford would probably AWOL again. Hojlund might make it to that figure, which is our best hope this season. The rest would probably struggle on low teens.
 
BristolRuss said:
Toney is available but we don't seem interested. We need to hope Hojlund makes a big step forward when he comes back but I'm not convinced.
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I'd imagine Toney wants Rashford level wages and Brentford also will want a lot for him
 
We play Marcus Rashford then end up with this pass map. Good luck buying any player and getting 20 goals from them when the manager is completely incapable of setting up the team to service your primary attacking threat.

 
kouroux said:
Lots of money spent on Hojlund and Zirkzee who aren't proven scorers.
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All on ETH to show why he chose these type of forwards. I don't mind not having a typical nr 9 but the goals have to come from somewhere or we will have a hard time this season.
 
TMDaines said:
We play Marcus Rashford then end up with this pass map. Good luck buying any player and getting 20 goals from them when the manager is completely incapable of setting up the team to service your primary attacking threat.

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Why do our passing maps always look like pure chaos? Was something I noticed last year as well
 
TMDaines said:
We play Marcus Rashford then end up with this pass map. Good luck buying any player and getting 20 goals from them when the manager is completely incapable of setting up the team to service your primary attacking threat.

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Yep.
Even when Rashford was in the form of his life, we were still mediocre in attack.
 
TMDaines said:
We play Marcus Rashford then end up with this pass map. Good luck buying any player and getting 20 goals from them when the manager is completely incapable of setting up the team to service your primary attacking threat.

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Weirdly that I would say is almost a good shape for Rashford as it should suck people in leaving him plenty of space to run in to behind. Look at all that space for him to try and use. Him coming deep laying it off then a ball being played over the top is what should be happening there.

Ideally though Casemiro, Mainoo and Bruno should be more central
 
We’ve got 3-4 who can score 10-15 though.
 
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