Why can’t we score goals? (Not the Wout bashing thread)

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Pintu

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49 league goals so far. 8th best attack. Only marginally ahead of Villa on 9th, despite them having an amateur manager for 40% of the season.

Over the last 3 seasons we’ve scored 65,3 goal/season on average. Now we’re on our way to score about 56 this season.

Normally 65 is the lowest a top 4 team would score to secure the CL. Only Chelsea has recently managed to make top 4 scoring less, but they did so while winning a European trophy.
 
The empty void where a centre-forward should be probably has quite a lot to do with it.

There may well be more to it than that as well, but it's difficult to tell without seeing how the team adjusts to a functioning goalscorer in that position. It's a problem we've been trying to work around all season.
 
We're just too casual in front of goal. Our players seem to think they'll keep getting big chances time and again if they miss in the 1st, 25th or 45th minute and it's simply never the case. Fail to capitalise and you get punished at the highest level.

Add to that some truly braindead and selfish play in the final third from Rashford, Antony and Bruno who collectively all seem to think they are much, much better than they are.

Some of the latter also has to come back to the manager. This selfishness would not be tolerated at City and we seem to allow it time and again.
 
No bagsmen in our squad. No idea if these are true because anyone can say things on twitter, but these sound very believable just looking with your eyes:

 
We have two lethargic strikers in the box in Martial and Weghorst. One is poor and the other is perpetually struggling for match sharpness. Different players but the same result.

Then you have a RW in the front 3 that's as toothless as you can find at a top club.

This basically results in our attack being Bruno and Rashford.

If we could plug the gaps with goals from corners or penalties like we did under Ole that would help but we're not good at those.
 
Can’t remember the last absolute goal getter we had. Robin van Persie, over 10 years ago?

After him we had a whole slew of strikers past their sell by date — Ibrahimovic; Cavani; Ronaldo…
 
sullydnl said:
The empty void where a centre-forward should be probably has quite a lot to do with it.

There may well be more to it than that as well, but it's difficult to tell without seeing how the team adjusts to a functioning goalscorer in that position. It's a problem we've been trying to work around all season.
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I think it's that but also horrific shooting, horrific finishing and terrible decision making in the final third. We create a fair amount of chances but our conversion or cock up rate is really high.
 
Rightnr said:
We're just too casual in front of goal. Our players seem to think they'll keep getting big chances time and again if they miss in the 1st, 25th or 45th minute and it's simply never the case. Fail to capitalise and you get punished at the highest level.

Add to that some truly braindead and selfish play in the final third from Rashford, Antony and Bruno who collectively all seem to think they are much, much better than they are.

Some of the latter also has to come back to the manager. This selfishness would not be tolerated at City and we seem to allow it time and again.
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I think this can be said for the majority of our team. Barring players like Martinez and Shaw, and in some cases AWB ( never thought I'd say that), most of our players attempt things with the ball they are not just good at. They think they can play one touch football out of trouble and play at their tempo when they just aren't that good. Casemiro is one of the worst culprits of it and I had made this point a couple of months ago that he tries too many things first time and they hardly come off.
 
We didn't have a functioning attack all season. When Martial is there we look better, and he looks barely fit and a shadow of his former self.

We play a midfielder in right wing.

Our best full back plays CB now.

I mean it's not that difficult to understand. Our fire power compared to Ole days is levels below.

Edit: i just realized we're the only team in top 10 that has a negative goals - xG parameter. So yeah, we have no goalscorers (surprise surprise). But we also don't create enough to get into fight on top level.
 
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We have no recognised out-and-out striker, it’s as simple as that.

We rode on Rashford’s great form but all we have are wide forwards, and not the ‘prime Ronaldo’ type of wide forward. They can have golden spells, score a few games in a row, but nobody’s a guaranteed 20-30 goal per season player.

Frankly it’s a miracle we are where we are, playing without a striker and still with Top 4 in our own hands.
 
We also have wide players who aren't particularly creative with their passing.
 
Because the players we have currently representing us apart from Rashford are not good finishers but we could have a very good finisher next season.
 
It's quite a simple explanation.


Strikers in the first PL team:
Eric Cantona
Mark Hughes

Strikers in the Double Double team:
Eric Cantona
Any Cole
Ole Gunnar Solksjaer

Strikers in the Treble team:
Dwight Yorke
Andy Cole
Teddy Sheringham
Ole Gunnar Solksjaer

Strikers in the early 2000s team:
Ruud Van Nistelrooy
Ole Gunnar Solksjaer
Diego Forlan

Strikers in the 2008 team:
Cristiano Ronaldo
Wayne Rooney
Carlos Tevez
Louis Saha

Strikers in the last title season:
Robin Van Persie
Wayne Rooney
Javier Hernandez
Danny Welbeck


Our success over the years has largely correlated with the number and quality of the strikers in our team.

Strikers in the 2023 team:
Wout Weghorst
Anthony Martial
 
  1. No focal point
  2. Rashford cuts in and shoots a lot
  3. Antony either cuts in to shoot or to pass and move but doesn’t seem to cross the ball much
  4. We aren’t very creative
I think until we fix issue 1 we won’t see if the others are because there is nobody to create off, nobody in the box the cross/pass to or if it’s player mentality
 
It's not just missing a top CF, it's our entire forward line, they rarely can finish it's a surprise some of them have kids.

Bruno and Antony specifically have missed an incredible amount of chances this season, add to that the general selfishness and the poor decision making.
 
We don't have a striker, or creative wingers.

So we have three players who we play in the striker role. Martial has not been good enough for a long time, Weghorst isn't a premier League level striker and essentially doesn't perform that role as a result, and Rashford isn't a striker.

Similarly, Sancho has no confidence and is not doing the right things or making the right decisions. Antony only has one dimension and it's easily countered, and Rashford mostly just runs in a straight line into opposition defenders.

These are the players we rely on to score goals because they are our forward line. Rashford had a really good purple patch and that's why we are where we are, and now that it's over we will struggle to score goals. If we had a striker, or even a creative goalscoring winger then things would be very different as we have Eriksen, Bruno and Casemiro picking out good passes that a decent forward would be doing much, much more with.
 
Standards have dropped massively. Fergie was a tart for a good striker, he understood that goals win games
 
No reliable striker available to us. Weggy tries his hardest but it’s not enough and probably not fair to depend on him as much as we do. Martial is either very flaky or injured.

If we had Toney, Watkins, Ferguson, Wilson or Isak up front, we’d look much better.

It’s a fecking once in a lifetime moment we’re stuck in too. We had to sack our ‘star striker’. We have another striker who is suspended AND we have an ongoing sale so therefore we can’t go out and buy a decent replacement.

Strikers this season has been a massive FML moment.
 
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Poorly coached team with awful attacking players who can't be arsed most of times.
 
Because we're rubbish at finishing. I know it's an oversimplification, but nothing sits truer.
We have 8 in our last 8 premier league games. And unlike United sides from the last few years, I'm slightly glad to be able to say that it's not a creation problem anymore. Yesterday, so many of our chances were squandered because players in striking positions left it too late to have any other options to shoot barring the near post.

SAF was right about Rashford not being a striker, no matter how much he's bailed us out. The guy's gotten in a 100 decent goal scoring positions with his immaculate speed, movement and intelligence this season, and can just about take 30 of them.
 
We don’t have a killer in front of goal. The finishes yesterday were just hit and hope strikes at goal. 49 goals all season is a disgrace
 
Absolutely baffling how many think having a striker is some sort of a panacea in the modern game. Absolute dinosaur thinking.

Man City won the league with no striker. They just created loads of chances and put a lot of them away. We just don't create enough and our finishing of these few ones are quite pathetic.

If you think a striker would somehow fix our problem, we didn't look much better with Cavani or Ronaldo and if nothing else, they were proper strikers. But I would love to see Rashford and Antony's selfishness finally be criticised next season because there would be no excuse to pille on Martial (who should go) at that point.
 
Profligacy in front of goal in every possible aspect. We don't score from set pieces. We don't win enough penalties and we don't have a great long shot taker or free kick taker. We don't have a one chance one goal type great finisher in our team. Rashford has done brilliantly this season but he's not a excellent finisher too. And the less said about Antony the better. A fully fit Martial is good for 20 goals a season but a fully fit Martial is also a myth.

Unfortunately, Greenwood was the exact wide forward who ETH would've loved. He could go on both sides, hit long rangers and also not miss the chances Antony missed yesterday.

So yes, getting better finishers is the only way to solve the problem because the team creates enough chances. And the first goals in games like yesterday is crucial and we can't keep missing our opportunities.
 
A lot of it is comes down to decision making for me and I think that will become more evident next season as we try to integrate a proper striker. Our attackers tend to make poor choices and are too greedy.

Next season Antony and Rashford are going to have to learn when to pass.
 
We were supposed to score a lot of goals, but since we all collectively observe this phenomenon to no end, its quantum state was severely disturbed and the outcome has totally changed.
 
Last night we missed a few chances but in general the issue is we just don't create enough.

There is close to zero chemistry between our wingers and fullbacks which is a massive problem. Add in the fact that Rashford is the only consistent performer in the forward positions and it's not hard to see why we've struggled in this department.

Kane would paper over a lot of the cracks because he's an elite finisher and creator rolled into one. But in truth we need better attacking fullback options and a consistently creative winger to make the step towards becoming an elite team. But I would have hope that at least one of Antony, Sancho or Diallo can step up next season in a way that Martinelli, Saka and Grealish have this campaign.
 
DWelbz19 said:
Can’t remember the last absolute goal getter we had. Robin van Persie, over 10 years ago?

After him we had a whole slew of strikers past their sell by date — Ibrahimovic; Cavani; Ronaldo…
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Fecking hell, RVP at United is 10 years ago...
 
Three goalscorers out of the squad this season in Cavani, Ronaldo and Greenwood and not adding one in is probably the main reason. Thats probably 25-30 goals out the squad immediately. We create chances just need to someone to put them away.
 
shabz said:
Three goalscorers out of the squad this season in Cavani, Ronaldo and Greenwood and not adding one in is probably the main reason. Thats probably 25-30 goals out the squad immediately. We create chances just need to someone to put them away.
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No we don't. Not nearly enough of them.
 
Our wide players do not have the skillset to consistently create chances. Applies to the fullbacks as well. Wout is not getting sitters to miss to begin with, so I wouldn't bash him albeit it's obvious he needs to be improved on.
 
I wonder where we would be at if we had a forward like Giroud.. We create many chances, but we don’t take advantage.. If we do, momentum of the games would obviously shifts as well..
 
Lack of killer instinct and natural strikers. We just have two wide attackers constantly taking turns at the CF role.

The only other one running in the box is Sabitzer but we rarely see him and our other attackers have no idea how to utilize his movements.

In short it's a combination of incompatible players that need moving on.
 
As good as Rashford was during his purple patch he isn't a natural finisher and he doesn't have an eye for goal or being in the right position.

Martial is a better natural finisher but again he doesn't have an eye for goal, how many tap ins does he get? Same as Rashford pretty much none as they don't like being in the box but prefer cutting into the box from wide. Martial is also ridiculously injury prone.

Weghorst hard working but plays deep and has a terrible finish.

Fernandes spends more time rolling around pretending to be injured or moaning to be effective in front of goal like he was when he first joined.

Outside of those who scores for us, Antony? And he is so predictable it's bordering on idiotic.
 
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