Not enough Goalscorers

Jeffthered

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I am quite optimistic. With our new style of play, Martial and Rashy I can see 40 goals between them. Pogba & Mct 15 goals. Mandz & Greenwood 10 goals at least. James, Lingard, Sanchez and Maguire combine 15 goals. So it is 80 goals.
You surprise me. That's a wish rather than expectation.

Man utd No 9 has to be looking at 20+ Premiership goals, and maybe back this up with a few assists.

Rashford doesn't even seem interested in being that goalscoring No 9. He seems fixated on this ' all-round forward' concept. And what does that mean exactly? Just watch Ageuro and Kane, and try follow OK.

Unfortunately, I have no faith in Martial. He's in another world and lacks too many essential attributes to be that top player.
 

DickDastardly

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It all depends how we get into the season.

Confidence can do a lot! We all know what they are capable, it's just a matter of doing it week on week out.

There is 38 games, i can see them both going for goal per game combined. (Martial and Rashord)

Now include a bit of luck and confidence and you can see them going for more then that.

Add to that a couple from the rest of our goalscorers (Pogba, Lingard, Greenwood, Mata...), and add a threat from Maguire and maybe a couple from James and we'll hit 70 with ease.
 

Ban

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What's happening with Sanchez, will we sell him or he'll feature this year.
 

Ekeke

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Maguire is going to play in midfield to replace Ander and also score 25 goals to replace Lukaku
 

DickDastardly

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@Ban , yeah, forgot about him. feck, he might give us a goal pr two.

Maguire is going to play in midfield to replace Ander and also score 25 goals to replace Lukaku
He scored what, 3 or 4 goals last season....i can see him replicating the same this season as well.
Why not improve? Makes sense.
 

Canagel

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Don't worry we still have Pogba to use as our scapegoat incase everything goes tits up.
 

Zilla

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For me, I feel that we don't seem to have enough goalscorers because we hardly create a proper chance.

Look at sterling from Man City. He was not finding the net on consistent basis till Pep took over. He started scoring due to the way Man city plays. Most of his goals are simple tap ins, or 1 v 1 due to through balls he receive.

If Ole can get us to play in a system that creates alot of good chances..I'm sure our forwards and midfield will start scoring regularly.
 

Ainu

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We barely have a functional midfield so chance creation will suffer and we completely lack attackers that can turn half chances into goals, or conjure up their own chances. Taken together, it's a recipe for disaster and it's utterly negligent of the club to leave us in this position. I can see this being our worst post-Fergie season yet and it's completely self-inflicted.

All of this goes out of the window if by some miracle everything magically clicks. I can't say I'm holding out too much hope though.
 
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Annihilate Now!

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I put this in another thread, before I saw there was an actual thread on goals.

I am very worried about goals, and creativity, but mainly goals.

When Ole came in we were banging them in for fun, but - and correct me if i'm wrong - I remember a lot of this was due to us being very, very clinical. Seem to recall our XG was the highest (lowest?) in the league during that time or something like that.

Then when the wheels came off after the Arsenal game we managed to score 5 goals from open play in 11 games... and it's not like we were creating much in that time either.

Now for balance sake we did score 33 goals excluding pens in the prior 14 games (in that happy/clinical phase) - and Lukaku was our top scorer in that period with 8 goals... who we have now sold and looks like we won't replace adequately.

Yes we have Greenwood and Gomes coming through, but it is a bit much to be expecting a new burst of goals and creativity to come from teenagers, who will be patchy anyway due to the fact that they are teenagers.
 

Ayush_reddevil

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Just hard to see 70+ league goals in this squad . I can see us scoring between 50 to 60 which would mean that we would have to have a record breaking defensive season
 

Slysi17

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We barely have a functional midfield so chance creation will suffer and we completely lack attackers to that can turn half chances into goals, or conjury up their own chances. Taken together, it's a recipe for disaster and it's utterly negligent of the club to leave us in this position. I can see this being our worst post-Fergie season yet and it's completely self-inflicted.

All of this goes out of the window if by some miracle everything magically clicks. I can't say I'm holding out too much hope though.
I have said previously that we will drop out of the top six this season. I hate saying it and want to be optimistic but I am just not. Actually think it could be worse than the David Moyes season.
 

JJ12

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Enter Gomes the creator
 

Schmeichel's Cartwheel

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"playing performance doesn’t really have a meaningful impact on what we can do on the commercial side of the business"

- Ed Woodward

The fact that we our putting our faith in Martial and Rashford, who are 1 in 3 strikers, Sanchez, who is injury prone and looks completely passed it, Lingard, who scored 4 league goals last season & a bunch of youngsters who are completely unproven at PL level, shows just how little our board care about results on the pitch. We have sold our top goalscorer and lost our 2nd best midfielder (and #1 captain candidate imo) on a free, and replaced neither.
 
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thegregster

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No more excuses for Martial and Rashford.

They have to deliver.
 

AJ10

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Rashford and Martial need to have seasons which justifies their wages otherwise we'll see lots of 0-0.
 

trevor newnham

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whos this Inaki Williams we are apparently looking to spend 80 mill on? hes not a striker is he
 

doomy20

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Our rivals do not rely on their youth kids and we should neither. All those predicted one digit goal numbers from Greenwood, Gomes etc get us nowhere, its far to instable
 

Okey

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Looks like we've concentrated on preventing goals and neglected actually scoring them. If the window ends as it is with no one else in, it'll be quite shocking. A weaker midfield and attack after the shambles that was last season is bordering on criminal. We should be laying the groundwork for a massive protest against Woodward and the board if things go tits up.
 

Zoo

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This is my biggest issue. I see a lot of talk about midfield but McTominay has been a minor revelation, Fred has ability just needs to settle in his second season, Gomes is ready and waiting.

In attack Martial and Rashford remain immature and inconsistent, Sanchez is a busted flush, Greenwood is just 17.
 
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Vidyoyo

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Yep, we haven't got enough depth up top. Lukaku wasn't great but selling him and replacing him with nobody is terrible business.

Greenwood
Rashford
Martial

That's our strike force. It's just not going to get enough goals (Pogba on pens doesn't count).
 

reddevil80

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whos this Inaki Williams we are apparently looking to spend 80 mill on? hes not a striker is he
He's a forward for Athletico Bilbao I think and his stat's last year were something like 1 in 3 goal to game ratio. I think he was forecast to be one of the next big things but hasn't attained that level. As I recall, even Liverpool were looking at him at one point. From what little I've seen of him, he seems to have pace and is very agile up front. If he does come, he might just be the success he was supposed to be, I just can't see it myself.
 

reddevil80

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I know this will sound mental but I wouldn't be surprised if the new "wonderkid" that we got from Ajax makes a couple of appearances this season and scores a couple too. Has anybody else watched him or seen more than the little snippets dotted about the interweb?
 

red4ever 79

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Last season we scored 65 goals. Man City scored 95 and Liverpool 89.

We are selling Lukaku who scored 12 of those 65 despite having a bad season. That's 18 % of our out put gone.

So in a world where we already needed to improve an attack to compete and find +20 goals from we now need to find another 12 on top.

In other words to compete or to be competitive we need to find around 30 goals extra from somewhere.

Ed over to you
 

Beaucoup

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Yep, we haven't got enough depth up top. Lukaku wasn't great but selling him and replacing him with nobody is terrible business.

Greenwood
Rashford
Martial

That's our strike force. It's just not going to get enough goals (Pogba on pens doesn't count).
Don't forget the complete lack of creativity behind this lot.
 

Andycoleno9

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We just sold our best striker without replacing him. It is getting better and better
 

antohan

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Don't forget the complete lack of creativity behind this lot.
Far more concerned about that. If you create enough, those guys will score, what I wouldn't bank on is bagging the only two chances in 90 mins.
 

Revan

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Struggling to see how we're going to cope without an addition. Daniel James, Martial, Rashford, Mata, Sanchez and Lingard don't fill me with the confidence to score 20 goals a season combined. And these will no doubt play the bulk of our season.

Unless Greenwood fast-tracks his development we are pretty fecked going into the season.
20 from them is not that bad. I guess we should expect at least 35 from Martial and Rashford (otherwise the 200k/week contracts they got will turn to be bad decisions), and 15 from Pogba, taking the total tally to 70. You can expect another 10 from the rest of the squad, so 80 goals in total.

We scored 84 goals last season. So we need to hope that all the categories I mentioned will do better. I think most likely is that Martial will explode and have a 25+ season (assuming that he plays as a striker), otherwise we are in trouble.

Obviously, we should expect to concede way fewer goals.
 

Revan

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I feel sorry for Martial and Rashford. They’ll get blasted and they should not be put in this position. It’s almost reckless what we have done. This could really damage their confidence.
They are not kids anymore. This will be Martial's fifth season (Rashford's too but he debuted on February). They also earn a combined 400k/week. If they cannot score at least 35 goals (they scored 25 in their first season), then we should look to upgrade on them.
 

Kevin

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No more excuses for Martial and Rashford.

They have to deliver.
Why? The midfield has one creator. Plenty of excuses if they find it hard to carry all the burden of scoring and creating.
 

mitchmouse

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we seem to be relying on things like Sanchez remembering how to play football and score goals... lots of goals. We are now trul caught in a vicious circle: to attract the best players you must be in the CL.. if you aren't you can't attract top players... without top players you can't get in the CL. we are well and truly still copying Liverpool: prepare for years in obscurity
 

Wanderlust_09

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I am yet to see that happen ever since he signed for us. No idea why we renewed his contract, the only standout game he had I remember is the Liverpool game way back when LVG was our manager.

I think we are going to struggle to score goals but we will concede a lot less. I feel we will have a similar season to LVG's 2nd season if we dont sign anyone.
I am not saying Mata is going to have a great season.

I'm just saying that we are in a spot of bother when our season rests on expecting Pogba and Mata to be our creative sparks, and relying on Martial and Rashford for the kind of goal tallies they have never had before.

I am sorry to say this, but I am afraid we may not finish better than we did this time and could even risk slipping further down even things don't change dramatically. I sincerely hope I am proved wrong.
 

HJ12

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Martial and Rashford are clearly not at world class level yet, but they are good strikers. I think Bbth should be able to increase their output provided they get better service - which for me is where our problem lies. The amount of times I saw Martial making good runs and peeling off defenders in preseason, only to be overlooked by the players behind him not being incisive enough with their passes or the timing of their passes, would kill the best of strikers.
 

Hamadovich86

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Lots of questions about our attack, can Rashford and Martial step up and score 40-50 goals between them? I have no idea, I like to think they could though!

EDIT: 40-50 goals is an insane total, they scored 10 each in the PL last season, if they can go up to 15-20 each it'll be an improvement!
 

Nori-

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Rashford, Martial, Sanchez and Pogba all have to step up big time this year.

If they are anything other than great we're in trouble. It looks like we've fixed one problem (defense) and created a new one by selling our main striker. Sigh