This season is going to be huge in determining our short-term timeline.
For me the following questions need to be answered:
1. Is Onana good enough, we have seen flashes of good and bad moments.
2. Will Martinez prove his freak injuries are behind him,
3. The left back situation. Whether its Shaw, Mazraoui or Amass, but we need a solution.
4. What type of player will Mainoo start to mold into? Is he capable of sharing the defensive responsibilities with a DM.
5. Will Garnacho or Holjund have breakthrough seasons. I think we are going to rely on at least one of these young fellas to become 25 goal/season players. Can they take a big step this year and add an extra 7-10 goals to their seasonal tally.
Depending on the outcome of some of these questions, we will know how far we are from seriously competing for a title.
We are a long way from competing for a title even with 2 or 3 really good signings. This United team under ETH is too inconsistent and doesn’t score enough goals.
This is ETH third year in charge and we still don’t know his style or his best 11.
The first season we saw a brave ETH who did very little wrong however his squad and team ran out of steam, the second season the manager got high on his own self esteem, hubris and stubbornness and looked a dejected man until the Fa Cup Final.
So hypothetically let’s assume an absolute dream window of the four players signed joined by
UGARTE, S Berg and
I Toney,
M Hermoso/B Chillwell(Free/loan), we then sell Jadon Sancho(40m),
S McTominay(25m), Hannibal(7m),
F Pellistri(8m) - This would mean that Ineos would have somehow managed to sell Fringe Players for £125-130m, remove 13 or 14 players and then add ;
L Yoro, M De Ligt, N Mazraoui, New LCB/LB, Ugarte, S Berg,
I Toney so Ashworth, Wilcox and Berrada would have done more in 2 months than the previous regimes did in 13 years and all of this by probably reducing the players wage bill by £20/30m per year as well!
The club may have potentially 60-63 games, they will have to play Thursday/Sunday at least 8 times and will be playing two extra European fixtures in January after Xmas.
We must assume due to the intensity of the modern game and the number of fixtures, we will always have 7 or 8 players not available and need a squad after that of 22/23 players just to compete,
Chelsea are a mess however they have so many options they can field two completely different 11’s this season and if they add Osimhen, then they are nailed on for top 3 for me irrespective of what people think.
United 24/25 Potential Squad Options
Prem League Team; (4231)
A Onana, D Dalot, M De Ligt, L Martinez, L Shaw, Ugarte, Mainoo, Bruno, Amad, I Toney*, Rashford
Bench (9) , A Bayinder, N Mazraoui,
H Maguire, S Berg, Casemiro, M Mount, Garnacho, J Zirkzee, R Hojlund
Europa/Cup Team (4222)
A Bayinder, N Mazraoui, H Maguire, L Yoro, H Amass/New LB, Casemiro, S Berg, M Mount, Zirkzee, Garnaucho, Hojlund
Bench (12) A Onana, T Heaton, L Shaw, D Dalot, M De Ligt, L Martinez, New LB/CB, T Collyer, K Mainoo, Bruno, Amad, Rashford, Eriksen, Antony
Now look at those players and tell me you think we have enough pace, physicality and creativity in deeper midfield positions, but most importantly I don’t see that team scoring over 2 goals per game in the PL and scoring 75 goals plus, something they have not done since our title wining squad of 2012-13 over 12 years ago!
And that’s with a decent striker like Toney coming in? Goals win matches especially in the PL and right now City
(96), Arsenal
(91), Liverpool
(86), Villa
(76),Chelsea
(77), Spurs
(74) and Newcastle
(85) all score much more than we do, all these teams are set up to average at least 2 goals per game as you can see by the goals scored in brackets next to each team.
United under any Dutch Coach are regressive and simply don’t score enough goals, that’s not a myth that’s a fact.
ETH two PL seasons 57 and then 58
LVG two seasons 62 and 49 goals scored where we’ve had Strikers like Falcao, RVP, Rooney, Ronaldo, Rashford, Garnacho.
Our so called Dutch masters have resided over 4th, 5th, 3rd and 8th place in the EPL and their teams have scored 226 goals in 152 PL matches which is an average of 1.48 goals per game, simply not good enough so for me I don’t care about conceding 1 or 2 goals, I want to see United Attack, Attack,
Attack, that’s what the club is famous for Scoring Goals, creating magic moments and especially at home scoring goals, we took 33 points last season at home with 6 home defeats and scored 31 goals and conceded 28 goals, anything that starts to resemble this inept team showing must result in a swift managerial change.
Just for a moment let that sink in 4 seasons of Dutch wonder coaches averaging 1.46 PL goals every game from 152 PL matches. Let’s compare an average English Coach like Eddie Howe, his Newcastle team have scored 153 goals in 76 Matches in their last two seasons, They have multiple options upfront and are looking to buy more because the goal from the owners is to win more matches by scoring more goals, so when fans say we don’t need another striker.
Why ?
United Fans need to remember the last time this United team won the EPL was 12 years ago when we scored 86 goals in 38 matches and for the record we had 4 Centre Forwards that season RVP, Wayne Rooney, Danny Wellbeck and Chicharito and all of them played over 30 matches and all contributed where they scored 66 goals combined, add that to Nani, A Young, Valencia, Giggs as outright wide strikers or wingers and as bad as that team was 12 years ago it still had far more attacking zest than this one and at least 5 or 6 genuine world class players like Rio, Evra, Carrick, Vidic, RVP, and Rooney plus two legacy players in Giggs and Scholes.
So talk of title challenge right now is pure nonsense, our first title and challenge is score 2 goals per game and play dominant attacking football not basketball football where we can’t score and are so open at the back we keep losing games.
