We don't have proper forwards

Those saying Garnacho is our best forward are probably the same people calling for him to be benched when he started our first two league games. Fickle!

I do agree that we haven't got proper goalscorers, though. Rashford out of goalscoring form means no goals for us, because he was our go to guy last season. We have no one else!

If only we bought Kane and Greenwood was allowed back. Now, that's what you call top goalscorers!
 
We don't have the right blend really. What made United exciting always was having exciting wingers. Not wide forwards. Wingers. Doesn't matter if they're inverted wingers or traditional ones, but they are creators out wide who can run with the ball and make things happen. The way that Bayern have Sane and Coman, city got Doku, Ousmane Dembele, Saka, Mitoma, Pedro Neto, etc.

Garnacho is this type, but he's young. Long term hopefully he progresses as he should. Elite talent and should be a key player for years to come. Rashford is a wide forward and has progressed more into that and less into someone who is useful when running with the ball. He has his uses, but when he loses goalscoring form then his game is pretty much not there. Now that Garnacho is here, we can rotate them and not rely on Rashford so much.

Amad, Sancho, Antony, Greenwood... none of them are the right type. Well Antony is the right type but just nowhere near good enough for premier league fullbacks so he doesn't end up doing much with attacking his fullback. Up top, Hojlund is for the first time in a long time the right type of striker. A proper center forward who will make runs all day, be a focal point, be a target, work hard... but hes 20. So he's a few years off where we expect him being able to be a top player when you look at physical center forwards historically. Lukaku and Haaland are pretty much your only 2 exceptions.
 
How many chances has our new striker really had? We don’t create enough. Haaland has so many chances he can afford to miss a few and still bag a hattrick, we could only dream of that sort of creation!
 
Rashford was good last season did he overachieve and now back to his inconsistent self? it's far too soon to judge Holjund. football intelligence with the forward unit needs to greatly improve , so many wrong options taken on attacks and poor decision making.
 
The issue is out wide I feel, and it is not that the club hasn't tried to address it - we have spent 150m on two duds out wide who offer zero threat to the fullback when they have the ball. If you watch any top team, they have genuine threat from out wide - the rise of Arsenal coincided with the rise of Saka and Martinelli, Liverpool's with Mane and Salah, Madrid with di Maria and Ronaldo.
 
The quality of players we have is still way better than the football we are seeing right now.

And I while i don’t blame the current manager as this has been going on for a decade, I still don’t understand how we haven’t gotten a proper Footballing identity more than a year into the tenure of a manager who is supposed to be a system builder.

early klopp and arteta had unbalanced squads with loads of bad players but it didn’t take long to start to see what they wanted from their teams.
 
Garnacho - Tony - Antony

I think should start next game. They are much more technical and sensible passers and clever with how they try to create space. Rashford looks like he needs a rest/reset - he’s lost his searing pace in my opinion. Hojlund has a lot of development to do but I think there’s promise there.
 
Football is a game about maximising your strengths and hiding your weaknesses and ETH’s squad building up until this point has been poor. It’s easy to scapegoat individual players but the manager has set them up for failure.

The signing of Hojlund is baffling. He doesn’t compliment Rashford at all as both of them are ‘head down’ players. Rashford was at his best when the no. 9 was a ‘head up’ player (Martial) who dropped deep to combine with others and created space in behind for Rashford to run into and finish. Hell, even as bad as Weghorst was, he enabled Rashford for thrive simply by not occuping the spaces that Rashford is a beast in.

The problem now is that Hojlund’s first instinct is to play on the shoulder of the last defender. As he drags them closer to their own goal, this means that the space for Rashford is in front of the defenders rather than behind them. This exposes Rashford’s weaknesses. He does not have the brain of a playmaker and he cannot do much between the lines except shoot. You can see now how Rashford’s confidence is on the floor. Ironically, the player most suited to combining best with Hojlund has been banished - Sancho.

And what about Garnacho? His struggles at the start of the season stemmed from the same issues causing Rashford’s struggles. In the first two games, Rashford was the striker. He was not good at dragging defenders out of position to create space for Garnacho to run in behind.


Sancho (or Martial) in the false 9 role would also be the glue that would enable Rashford, Garnacho and Hojlund to thrive as wide forwards but Ten Hag’s decisions are confusing. The front 3 of Pelli, Hojlund and Rashford was one of three players who play with their heads down and are best suited to running in behind rather than connecting with the midfield.

Ultimately, these disjointed attacking displays from United are down to Ten Hag’s squad building and selection. The forwards being selected are good players but they do not compliment each other. In my view, if you are going to play those who are best at running in behind, they need to be supported by those who are best at getting the ball to feet to combine with others and create space for the others to run in behind.

Now here is our issue. Our most available options are Hojlund, Garnacho, Rashford and Pellistri. All are best when there is space to run in behind. Yet those who are more creative are unavailable for various reasons. Martial and Amad are injury prone and Sancho is banished. Antony, an ETH signing, is neither good creatively nor does he have the speed to run in behind.

It’s a shambles of ETH’s own making.
 
Speako said:
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.
Click to expand...

This exactly hits the nail on the head, and it has been missing for a while, even in the simple/low level areas of the game.
EXAMPLES:
Whether it is positioning someone on the opposition goal-line when we have throw- in in the last third i.e.bringing in the no offside rule from a throw in, into play; or whether it is attempting to take a quick free kick when nobody only the kicker seems to know what he intends, anywhere on the pitch; or the lack of variation in corner kicking, (last time we had a short corner along the goal line it was Mata who took it); whether it is taking two or three touches on the ball in the direction you were moving, before finally playing the pass, giving opposition clear indications of what you are going to do; lack of awareness where other colleagues are when the opposition breaks, together with excessive 'ball watching'; stiffling with over safe plays with your own possession in safe areas, but then taking high risks with possession in dangerous areas.... the list is endless, what's mentioned above is simple 'school boy' errors, but they keep being repeated.
You can expect players to struggle with 'pressing' or counter-pressing, inverted full back play, false no 9's etc. these are relatively new developments in the game, but the items mentioned above are basic, very basic and the lack of these tends to indicate low levels of football intelligence, hope I am wrong that is something else.... but scratching my head to figure what!!
 
Hojlund and Garnacho are exactly the sort of players we should have so we don't have to rebuild every 3 years. The issue is that there's no incumbent players who they're replacing. If we can't afford world class 30 year olds I'd rather that we worked with the youngsters for now.
 
mitchmouse said:
we needed to offer whatever it took - pretty simple
Click to expand...

Until the other half of the fan base come out with ‘what the hell were you doing spending THAT much on 30yr old Harry Kane when we have so many other glaring holes in our squad!’

It would have simply been Kane and nobody else in the summer.
 
It's not about adding more forwards. It's about the roles on the pitch. Football can be a simple game, if you treat it with the respect it deserves. When you don't, it can and will punish you severely at this level.

It's quite telling when you hear people say that the answer to our woes would, obviously, be adding another player to whom the whole team would have to adjust. As if we haven't already made it our life's purpose to build a whole side around our two major contributors. And, my God, they demand a lot to perform to the best of their abilities. Sometimes, you know, you have to stop for a minute and think: Maybe this is as good as it gets, if i keep going down that particular road...

Anyway, United lack good, purposeful and incisive passing in front of the first line of defence. United also lack good options to receive the ball in the half-spaces and between the lines. What we lack the most is players who can provide the team (not themselves) with a variety of options. Solve these things, and the goals will come. Some of it is on the manager and the choices he has made. When your only plan to create chances is to find transitional moments through Bruno and, if that doesn't work, to create isos for Rashford and Garnacho, football will punish you.

But you don't need to be Pep Guardiola or to spend 100 million on a striker to beat a Hodgson side at home. That's the easy solution and we've often resorted to these. You need options, variables that will create simple solutions for you so you can play faster. When Pep says he instructs his players to pass the ball to their nearest teammate, he means it. It's that the nearest teammate is neither a static cone nor someone who moves only into the spaces where he wants/feels comfortable. Why does it always seem that we do the opposite at United?

There is nothing sophisticated about the way Liverpool deal with the low-block. They use rotations in their build-up that create time and space for one of the FBs or Virgil to hit the long diagonal. Here's the catch. The recipients of those long balls are players with good first touch, strong feet, good balance and excellent at link-up plays. Is that an option for us?

The problem isn't the man up front. The problem is treating football as a game of 11 individuals who just happen to wear the same shirt.
 
Jericholyte2 said:
Until the other half of the fan base come out with ‘what the hell were you doing spending THAT much on 30yr old Harry Kane when we have so many other glaring holes in our squad!’

It would have simply been Kane and nobody else in the summer.
Click to expand...

Indeed.

And in case people haven't gathered from our performances thus far, we were always a lot more than just Harry Kane away from competing for the title. And by the time we got to the point where the rest of the team might be able to challenge, Kane might be in the current Casemiro spot where people are questioning if he might be past it. Cue people saying it was stupid to make such a short term purchase.

Of course the obvious middle ground between that and someone like Hojlund would have been to sign someone akin to Osimhen, who is young enough that you'd still have confidence he'll be firing by the time the rest of the team is up to stratch but established enough that you'd also expect him to contribute a lot of goals immediately. But unfortunately there aren't many strikers who fit that profile and they'd all likely be very expensive.
 
Someone said:
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.
Click to expand...

You could also argue that Liverpool started scoring more freely after upgrading Henderson and Fabinho. Swings and roundabouts. All I know for sure is that we have issues in midfield and up front.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
You could also argue that Liverpool started scoring more freely after upgrading Henderson and Fabinho. Swings and roundabouts. All I know for sure is that we have issues in midfield and up front.
Click to expand...
There's an argument to be made that the only area we're (on paper) near where we want to be attacking-wise is keeper. Which is normal, totally normal.
 
Do you guys think that what Ferguson was able to do (have 4 senior forwards; eg Cole, Yorke, Solskjaer and Sheringham) would even be possible now? Not just for Utd but for any top team? It just seems crazy to me, looking back that he was able to have so much quality in that position, even taking into account the fact that playing 2 up front was more prevalent than it is now.
 
Ubik said:
There's an argument to be made that the only area we're (on paper) near where we want to be attacking-wise is keeper. Which is normal, totally normal.
Click to expand...

A strong argument too.

Every time a previous manager failed it’s always looked as though an inadequate squad had been a big factor in our failure. With a core of players ever present at the club throughout all this failure. At this stage it feels as though we’ll never turn things round until we have rebuilt the whole squad, from top to bottom. Rooted out and replaced every single one of the players who’ve been ever present through all this under-achievement. Because we’re following the exact same pattern, under every manager.

But this can’t possibly end well, due to our long term inability to uncover gems in the transfer market while paying insane fees for players that don’t improve us much. If at all.

I’m honestly giving up all hope at this stage.
 
It's a fair observation. Liverpool have had some very mediocre players in defence/midfield over the last decade but pulled off amazing feats through having world class attackers.

Rashford is awful. I genuinely think he's fortunate he's not playing at a bottom half team. Hojlund is 20 and currently below the likes of Wilson, Watkins and Toney, in terms of his overall contribution. Antony is also far from the finished article.
 
Most annoying part of the summer was watching Diaby go for 50 mil to fecking Villa when we paid almost twice that for a defensive winger that our manager loves.

I think in general we need to get more athletic as a team. We just aren’t dangerous as all from a pace or physicality standpoint, which would be fine if we were a team of technicians but we aren’t. But Bruno, Casemiro, Eriksen, Martinez, Antony, Pellistri, Lindelof, Maguire, and even Dalot is a ton of names to have of guys that aren’t robust or quick. You can get away with a few obviously, but not when the majority of the squad is like this.

Right now I’d only classify Rashford (who’s terrible out of posssession in his work rate), Hojlund, Garnacho, Mount, Shaw, and Varane as elite athletes in the basic sense. That’s an issue when you look at other squads. We often get outworked, and when we aren’t we rarely are dangerous on the counter.
 
We don’t have players to create chances for the type of striker that we signed in the summer.

We have Garnacho who is a self creator type of forward but rarely play him.

What we need are midfielders who are more patient in the final 3rd. Can retain the ball, pass it around, create openings and then make the killer pass.

Unfortunately we have Rashford who has football iq of a drunken brawler trying to do dojiu-jitsu and Bruno who just fires passes and shots like a monkey holding an ak47
 
I think ETH was hanging his hat on having Greenwood back. If the same Greenwood returned, he would have been a massive addition and would have taken a lot of the pressure of Hojlund.

I think ETH was gambling on Hojlund hitting the ground running, Martial staying fit and performing to a decent level and Greenwood returning to the same level, Sancho finally showing some of his potential and then Rashford/Antony/Garnacho performing.

Instead he's left with everyone expecting Hojlund to be like Haaland, Martial in and out as always, Greenwood away from the club with Sancho, Antony out with these allegations and his head probably not right, Rashford inconsistent and Garnacho only really performing but he had 2 starts to start the season and didn't really perform.
 
People eulogies about Klopp on here then refuse to acknowledge how he built their best side. Firminho > Mane > Salah > Van Dijk > Alisson , obviously there were signings around those but they built a potent attack then went on to tweak the defence.

Our biggest problem is we attempt to solve all our problems in single windows, see this Summer as a perfect example. We sign a young striker, an attacking midfielder to play no.8 & a sweeper keeper. In isolation these transfer are probably alright but you’re dropping them into an unstable eco-system. I said it pre-Summer & still believe it, our midfield is shocking & I don’t care if Kane was up top he’d struggle so we should have put all our resources into it & muddled on elsewhere then took the same approach on Attack or Defence next year as right now our Defence are constantly under pressure cause we don’t keep the ball & the attackers [Hojlund in particular] is feeding off less than scraps.

At this point though sort out the Attack, Midfield or Defence; just sort one department in its entirety.
 
AFC NimbleThumb said:
People eulogies about Klopp on here then refuse to acknowledge how he built their best side. Firminho > Mane > Salah > Van Dijk > Alisson , obviously there were signings around those but they built a potent attack then went on to tweak the defence.

Our biggest problem is we attempt to solve all our problems in single windows, see this Summer as a perfect example. We sign a young striker, an attacking midfielder to play no.8 & a sweeper keeper. In isolation these transfer are probably alright but you’re dropping them into an unstable eco-system. I said it pre-Summer & still believe it, our midfield is shocking & I don’t care if Kane was up top he’d struggle so we should have put all our resources into it & muddled on elsewhere then took the same approach on Attack or Defence next year as right now our Defence are constantly under pressure cause we don’t keep the ball & the attackers [Hojlund in particular] is feeding off less than scraps.

At this point though sort out the Attack, Midfield or Defence; just sort one department in its entirety.
Click to expand...

I dont think this is the problem at all. Plenty of other clubs do it, they just do it better than us and by a lot

The problem is our best CB was injured last season and we didnt get an upgrade in that position as his partner, so now hes struggling with his injury and not back to form we have a weakened defence without him.

We have a DM who is more interested in and doing well at going forward and scoring goals and not so good at running his aging legs to track back and we didnt sign a quality midfielder to help him with that or as an upgrade on Eriksen next to him.

We signed novelties. ETH wanted a keeper who can play with the ball like Ederson. That wasnt needed to take us up the table from 4th. Arsenal now have 2 keepers that cost nowhere near that

We signed an AM that doesnt really fit into how we were lining up in Mount, without moving Bruno out wide. Was that needed? No. And not for more money than Maddison went for, who is now lighting up the league for his new club...

We signed a very young striker who wasnt always starting at Atalanta, and was in his first fairly impressive goalscoring season. And for huge money. I'm sure he is an upgrade on our options because we had no options up front. But that was a lot to invest on a player who will most likely take 2 seasons to start showing that value


So what we have is insistance on peculiar things which dont appear like they're going to pay off anytime soon. And you cant have that as a manager. You have to take care of now so you can stick around for later.
 
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?
Click to expand...
Lautaro Martinez was linked with us. He's proven enough and seems to be on the rise for next level since the second of last season.
 
From where we were only a couple of years ago in the forward line, we’ve replaced the goals of Greenwood, Ronaldo & Cavani with Hojilund (& Weghorst for half a season). And we wonder why we’re struggling to score goals under ETH. That’s regression staring you in the face.
 
Someone said:
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.
Click to expand...
It is pretty dire - I'm investing a lot of unreasonable hope in Amad being everything we've imagined that he could be - probably a pipe dream, but still...
 
Going into the summer I think everyone agreed United needed 2 CF’s.

But the owners were never going to approve a big move for Kane, and certainly not 2 forwards…so they did the predictable Glazer thing and gave the manager an expensive kid.

As always that fecking family will take 3-4 windows to do what needed doing in 1.
 
It’s not for lack of trying. Sancho and Antony are supposed be lighting up the league by now, the level of Son or Salah. But it just hasn’t happened and we’ve to live with the failure.
 
RuudTom83 said:
Going into the summer I think everyone agreed United needed 2 CF’s.

But the owners were never going to approve a big move for Kane, and certainly not 2 forwards…so they did the predictable Glazer thing and gave the manager an expensive kid.

As always that fecking family will take 3-4 windows to do what needed doing in 1.
Click to expand...
Since RVP left, we either gone for an expensive kid or a washed out goalscorers. I think the missing piece is an inform player who scores for fun.
 
Red Star One said:
yes, we made grave mistakes in the transfer market
Click to expand...

Priorities were misplaced. I like Mount as a player and can see how he can help. But we already have quite a few young academy players who can be mounded into a number of midfield positions.

The money spent could be on a new young mobile CB and/or an experienced striker not called Kane. Last summer we overspent on Antony and closed the options on the needs we needed.
 
Jericholyte2 said:
Until the other half of the fan base come out with ‘what the hell were you doing spending THAT much on 30yr old Harry Kane when we have so many other glaring holes in our squad!’

It would have simply been Kane and nobody else in the summer.
Click to expand...
... and exactly who of those we've signed have shined? none. not a sausage. nada. I don't think you're right, by the way, I think we could have done other business too but you win nothing if you don't score goals - and we don't
 
Apart from Pellistri our wide forwards are incapable of playing without being inverted, constantly check back and pass back.
 
Its a crime the state of our forward line. Our net spend is the biggest in European football over the last decade and yet we have a forward line that is embarassed by every other major club in Europe and quite a few of the less-than major clubs too. Its a consequence of poor decision making in the transfer market, compounded by a complete zigzagging between managerial styles, which means we fall short in both quality and style.
 
We not only drifted away from the more modern style of football when Barcelona showed us how it was done in 09. We’ve actually drifted from our own style too.

United without a star striker and proper wingers is pretty wild how the club allowed this to happen. Surely that’s the first thing in the squad for United of all teams.

You get the boxes checked.

When was the last time we had a mid 20’s / peak of his career striker at the club? Martial doesn’t count…

Even winger too I can’t remember when we had a peak of his career one apart from Di Maria. We buy potential (which never comes good 90% of the time) or too old.
 
Redstain said:
The biggest issue is that the wide areas haven't been reinforced. Objectively last season Rashford was the only reason United got top four. So when you consider there's been no significant quality added to the attacking lineup, if Rashford doesn't have the same type of season the team will regress it's standing in the league it's simple logic.

If United had a banner to all the faults last season it would read along the lines of "where does the goals come from". Close to 100 million spent and it seems that banner definition is going to define the campaign this season again.
Click to expand...
(quoted July)

Said it all summer , the club employ all these individuals to oversee the progression of the team and they can't even plan effectively which unfortunately includes the manager. It was always going to go this way with the players signed. Club should have signed Frimpong, a right winger (Marcus Edwards) and potentially Kolo-Muani to even play off the left as he can dribble with the ball he offers threat.
 
mitchmouse said:
... and exactly who of those we've signed have shined? none. not a sausage. nada. I don't think you're right, by the way, I think we could have done other business too but you win nothing if you don't score goals - and we don't
Click to expand...

What part of the summer window where we spent about £150m on signings and then resorted to two cheap loans makes you think we could have spent £150m on Kane and done ANY other business???

And it’s not about whether those signings shone or not, it’s about fixing a single issue in the team when there are several, just as significant issues remaining in the team.
 
Jericholyte2 said:
What part of the summer window where we spent about £150m on signings and then resorted to two cheap loans makes you think we could have spent £150m on Kane and done ANY other business???

And it’s not about whether those signings shone or not, it’s about fixing a single issue in the team when there are several, just as significant issues remaining in the team.
Click to expand...
nothing was/still is more significant than our obvious inability to score goals
 
You must log in or register to reply here.