We don't have proper forwards

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Isn't it a bit obvious?

People are complaining about ETH, our midfield, fullbacks, and the injury crisis in defense, but when was the last time a team was successful with our current quality of forwards?

We used to really be annoyed with Fergie's lack of wiliness to spend a lot of money on midfielders through the years. And he always preferred making sure we have top quality forwards more than anything else. That's because they simply win you games.

What we have now is nothing. Rashford can only pull a good run once every 3 years. Hojlund is a 20 years old who could potentially be great, but absolutely not what we need now, and Antony does nothing but work hard and pass the ball back.

This team needed a Kane or Osimhen, and needed more quality on both sides. We could put on as much blame on Ten Hag as we want, and maybe he's partially to blame for our recruitment, but a couple of forwards upfront capable of scoring, and this team would have been successful.

Apart from Garnacho, I'd happily accept any offer for any of our forwards, and put the entire budget next summer into buying at least a top striker and a RW, and maybe a LW if we can afford it. We're properly fecked this season in that department. We don't have enough goals in us to do anything relevant. This will probably cost ETH his job.
 
Someone said:
This will probably cost ETH his job.
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Probably. But realistically, he's more than "maybe partially to blame" for the recruitment. We indeed needed proven quality upfront. It was far more of a priority than getting Mount for whatever reason or a ball playing goalkeeper.
 
I agree 100 %
Garnacho is our best forward and he is 19.
 
I was beating this drum all summer when everyone wanted a 4th choice CB or yet another CM. Our attack is barely midtable without Antony and Sancho - and it isn’t good enough with them. How many EPL clubs are starting Hojlund and Pellistri? How many top clubs is Garnacho getting the game time he currently is here? How many clubs would Martial still be a key squad player at? We need two top attacking players before we have any hope of doing anything. All I read is about phase 1 controllers though - football is about goals and we don’t score anywhere close to enough. You’d think after watching Ferguson continually prioritise attacking players we’d realise that but for the last decade our attack has been completely inadequate. Liverpool alone have 5 attacking players that would walk into our 11 ffs.
 
It`s one of the most annoying things watching us play when we are chasing a game, we just don`t look like scoring. If we go behind like yesterday they sit back and let us have the ball as we never actually threaten the goal. It must scare the life out of whoever we are playing when we bring Martial and Van der Beek on to win it for us.
 
Rista said:
Probably. But realistically, he's more than "maybe partially to blame" for the recruitment. We indeed needed proven quality upfront. It was far more of a priority than getting Mount for whatever reason or a ball playing goalkeeper.
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Which proven forward would you have gone for then, knowing Levy wouldn’t sell Kane to us, bearing in mind the need for a starting GK and midfield reinforcements?
 
It’s a fair point. Yesterday made it glaringly obvious. We don’t have pace in defence or midfield, and those with pace in attack have zero intelligence. It’s a recipe for disaster. (In fact to be fair, football intelligence was lacking all over the pitch). Teams are on us too quickly, as we have neither the speed of thought or movement to get out of trouble or build instantly threatening attacking situations. On the off chance we do get there, we have no idea what to do with it. The amount of crosses that hit the first man yesterday was embarrassing. The lack of movement all over the pitch was embarrassing. It was a mess.
 
Jericholyte2 said:
Which proven forward would you have gone for then, knowing Levy wouldn’t sell Kane to us, bearing in mind the need for a starting GK and midfield reinforcements?
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If we'd actually made an offer he might have - his board ordered him to sell
 
Our forwards are an issue especially wide. But overall, there is a lack of on ball skill, the first goal was the fruit of a serie of miscontrolled balls and dodgy passes for at last 30 to 60 seconds every player seemed to mess up something, the other thing is that United has to be the team with the softest passers in Europe, our players can't zip a pass to save their lives and I suspect that they couldn't trap it if someone decided to fire one.
 
Mickeza said:
I was beating this drum all summer when everyone wanted a 4th choice CB or yet another CM. Our attack is barely midtable without Antony and Sancho - and it isn’t good enough with them. How many EPL clubs are starting Hojlund and Pellistri? How many top clubs is Garnacho getting the game time he currently is here? How many clubs would Martial still be a key squad player at? We need two top attacking players before we have any hope of doing anything. All I read is about phase 1 controllers though - football is about goals and we don’t score anywhere close to enough. You’d think after watching Ferguson continually prioritise attacking players we’d realise that but for the last decade our attack has been completely inadequate. Liverpool alone have 5 attacking players that would walk into our 11 ffs.
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Yep, Fergie was always stacked with quality firepower, when the shit hit the fan he would throw them all on .
 
djembatheking said:
Yep, Fergie was always stacked with quality firepower, when the shit hit the fan he would throw them all on .
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Remember when we were so stacked he had to choose between Berbatov and Tevez most games? The drop off in quality up front between then and now is astonishing.

Mind you, you could say the same about every area of the pitch. Our midfield and (especially) defence is also a pale shadow of what they were when we used to win the league.
 
We don't have a CF capable of holding the ball up and bringing others into play. Unless Martial magically rediscovers his 19/20 form.

We don't have any wide players capable of consistently keeping the ball under pressure and in tight spaces whilst also having the ability to beat their man with his dribbling.

We don't have any midfielders capable of keeping the ball under pressure and controlling a high level game without resorting to Hollywood tactics. Unless Amrabat rediscovers his Verona form.

All of these have been an issue since before ten Hag joined, and in 3 transfer windows and hundreds of millions spent, he still has not addressed any of these problems bar potentially Amrabat who was a last minute emergency loan.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Remember when we were so stacked he had to choose between Berbatov and Tevez most games? The drop off in quality up front between then and now is astonishing.

Mind you, you could say the same about every area of the pitch. Our midfield and (especially) defence is also a pale shadow of what they were when we used to win the league.
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Just looking at the 08/09 squad and we had Rooney, Tevez, Berbatov, Ronaldo, Welbeck, Nani, Giggs, Scholes, Frazier Campbell, Macheda and most telling - Jonny Evans.
 
I do think we have the worst collection of forwards we've had post-Fergie, hopefully form can be regained in some cases and talent developed in others, but at this point yeah, it's not a good situation.
 
There is a good chance this transfer window will end up being very poor. Still early days though.
 
Most top team will bite our hands for rashford and Bruno.

I m surprised people are already condemning and making a final verdict on Holjund. Even though he wasn't my cup of tea, I rather we went for muani or sesko, but I m pretty sure majority of our fans wanted holjund. So, you can't be complaining now about him.

Garnacho is also one of our brightest prospect. So, I do not see any issue with our forward beside the right attacking area (mainly due to Sancho and Antony absence). However, i dont see why ETH doesnt try mount in that inverted role. Regardless, With better coaching our attacking should be flying. Rashford and Bruno are capable of carrying our attack themselves, but our gameplan isn't as effective in making them perform at their peak.
 
The lack of forwards has been pretty appalling for years now. Ibra was the only one who actually made a positive impact, then he tore up his knee.

Transfer policy over the last decade has buried this team and that starts from how the owner have set up the club. Nothing will change until Glazers are out and we get an owner who's interested in progressing the football with a modern structure. Otherwise, we just sign whoever the manager wants, chase unobtainable targets, wait way too late to get serious, and then overpay for mediocre or past it talent, fire manager, rinse repeat.
 
We don’t have proper forwards or, except Casemiro, proper midfielders (Eriksen is intelligent enough to play there but he’s a 10). We are also lacking on the wing and at full-back. We just haven’t bought good appropriate players.
 
Amadaeus said:
Most top team will bite our hands for rashford and Bruno.

I m surprised people are already condemning and making a final verdict on Holjund. Even though he wasn't my cup of tea, I rather we went for muani or sesko, but I m pretty sure majority of our fans wanted holjund. So, you can't be complaining now about him.

Garnacho is also one of our brightest prospect. So, I do not see any issue with our forward beside the right attacking area (mainly due to Sancho and Antony absence). However, i dont see why ETH doesnt try mount in that inverted role. Regardless, With better coaching our attacking should be flying. Rashford and Bruno are capable of carrying our attack themselves, but our gameplan isn't as effective in making them perform at their peak.
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I'm not sure if they can meet a top teams standards outside of psg.
 
Roof is leaking...stadium in tatters ... players underperforming... no recruitment process .. no scouts to find the hidden gem ..
Too much pressure for the players and the coach .... too much news .. mostly bad ..
Owners love Twitter and Instagram clicks ..
That's been our story ..
We need a full reset like Arsenal .. revamp everything.. trust a manager and see where it takes us ..
 
Yes, and Rashford being the main culprit. Criminally overrated on here.
 
Reminds me so much of going into the 2014-2015 season with just Rooney (often a midfielder) and the newly bought Martial as strikers. Am i forgetting a striker from that season? Rashford was promoted to first team around February I think that season, and I think we had people like Nick Powell and Will Keane as reserves. Juan Mata and Lingard on the wings. I'm sure i'm forgetting someone but the club's planning absolutely sucked, as it does now.

At any rate, firepower has been a recurring problem for years ever since Fergie left, especially compared to the amount of goals City, Liverpool and even Arsenal score just lately. We've gone past 70 goals scored just once in that time and our goal difference has been dismal for the last couple of seasons.
 
Amadaeus said:
Most top team will bite our hands for rashford and Bruno.

I m surprised people are already condemning and making a final verdict on Holjund. Even though he wasn't my cup of tea, I rather we went for muani or sesko, but I m pretty sure majority of our fans wanted holjund. So, you can't be complaining now about him.

Garnacho is also one of our brightest prospect. So, I do not see any issue with our forward beside the right attacking area (mainly due to Sancho and Antony absence). However, i dont see why ETH doesnt try mount in that inverted role. Regardless, With better coaching our attacking should be flying. Rashford and Bruno are capable of carrying our attack themselves, but our gameplan isn't as effective in making them perform at their peak.
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Bruno yeah, Rashford not so much.

I don't think anyone is making a final verdict on Hojlund. It's just not fair to him to bare the responsibility in that age. Ideally you'd have a good team in place and then integrate him slowly and hopefully you'd end up with a top quality striker. You can't possibly look at last season and come to the conclusion that he's the answer.
 
Most of our senior forwards are brainless/lazy or both. Rashford, Sancho, Anthony, Martial being the main culprits. Seriously a pathetic bunch.

At least our youngsters (Garnacho, Hojilund, Amad) look promising.
 
We should try for Toney in January. 9 months out is akin to a long injury, it should only take him a month maybe two to get him up to fitness. Let him and Hojlund share the minutes. I would bin Antony off for Neto too but that's never going to happen.

I agree that Hojlund Amad and Garnacho look like they'll be good players in the future. But we need goals now. Let them play without the pressure of having to be the main scorer first.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Remember when we were so stacked he had to choose between Berbatov and Tevez most games? The drop off in quality up front between then and now is astonishing.

Mind you, you could say the same about every area of the pitch. Our midfield and (especially) defence is also a pale shadow of what they were when we used to win the league.
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Agree but I think top forwards can easily make up for it. When Liverpool lost Mane, Diaz got injured, and Darwin struggled a bit, everyone else got exposed, and they scored 20 less goals in the league the following season. Now their forwards have 12 goals between them in the league this season while ours have only 1 by Rashford.
 
3KDré said:
We should try for Toney in January. 9 months out is akin to a long injury, it should only take him a month maybe two to get him up to fitness. Let him and Hojlund share the minutes. I would bin Antony off for Neto too but that's never going to happen.

I agree that Hojlund Amad and Garnacho look like they'll be good players in the future. But we need goals now. Let them play without the pressure of having to be the main scorer first.
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We’ve got no money .
 
We don't have proper owners, executives, football directors or players.
 
Amadaeus said:
Most top team will bite our hands for rashford and Bruno.

I m surprised people are already condemning and making a final verdict on Holjund. Even though he wasn't my cup of tea, I rather we went for muani or sesko, but I m pretty sure majority of our fans wanted holjund. So, you can't be complaining now about him.

Garnacho is also one of our brightest prospect. So, I do not see any issue with our forward beside the right attacking area (mainly due to Sancho and Antony absence). However, i dont see why ETH doesnt try mount in that inverted role. Regardless, With better coaching our attacking should be flying. Rashford and Bruno are capable of carrying our attack themselves, but our gameplan isn't as effective in making them perform at their peak.
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And yet we’re barely scoring
 
Leftback99 said:
We’ve got no money .
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Didn't we use the summer budget to buy Bruno? I don't think Toney would cost more than £50m and it would save us having to buy a striker in the summer. I understand this is not realistic with our owners, but it's doable.
 
We have 150m of transfer fees and I don't know how much in wages sitting in two forwards who aren't playing because they can't behave. A third one is away on loan and we're presumably paying part of those wages. That's a good percentage of the budget tied up being used on nothing. It's a massive problem.
 
elmo said:
And yet we’re barely scoring
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Teams aren't scared of Rashford. He gets plenty of space to run with the ball. Teams are scared of Bruno. More often than not this season he's been man marked.
 
golden_blunder said:
Would have cost 110m without factoring in his wages. Which for a 30 year old in his last year of contract would be crazy.
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Yeah. You could justify it if you truly believed he was the last piece to turn you into a genuine title contender...but this team was never close to that. Would have been another bad signing.

We need to get better at long term squad building. Trying to sign players who'll peak together - or at least won't be falling off a cliff.
 
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