Rasmus Højlund | Signed for United

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Some actual match highlights of him instead of just YouTube comps for anyone interested in his general match play
 
He might or might not start the majority of games but I don’t think the top managers think like a lot of posters on here do - Player A is first choice and Player B is back up (especially this pervading idea that some players are signed to be back up and are told that they need to accept that, which is ludicrous).

We had gaps in the squad and we signed genuine quality (or players with specific qualities) and yes, they always start if fit but that’s because they are better than the players competing with them. If you sign top players (or players who deliver what the manager wants) then it will usually pan out that they get selected if the squad is generally weak. This looks like fixing the first XI but it is really fixing the squad with players that are levels better than what’s already at the club.

Regarding the CF, the question is probably “who’s the best player we can get with our budget” but it’s not a simple question to answer because if we can’t get players like Kane or Osimhen then we have to start factoring in potential.

Is Hojlund good enough to compete for starts? I think he is. But we are very thin at CF which is why I say we need two new forwards. If Hojlund is one, it wouldn’t shock me if we’re after a loan or free transfer of a guy in his 30s, as the other.

Taremi would be the most likely other CF
 
As some posters have said. The reason we have a cap on our spending this summer has nothing to do with FFP, that’s just journalist BS, the reason we have a cap on our spending is the fecking leeches. If not for them, we would have already tied Onana, Hojlund and would be negotiating for Kane.

Yeah no doubt those two leeches being split with their other siblings about a sale has cost Erik any chance of signing Kane this summer
 
Even the way he presses is just so quick. He gives players no time with the ball. We need more of that in this squad. I reckon he’ll be a welcome addition.

Reckon we could go for experienced older option to help take pressure off?
 
@zaafi It's weird that he didn't start as many as you thought a main striker was, but then you're right that he has the most minutes among Atalanta's attackers. So he probably counted as main striker then, by total minutes played definition.
 
reminds me a bit of a younger Rooney hope he turns out the same if he ends up playing for us.
 
His build, low centre of gravity, control and mainly agressiveness off and on the ball.

OK, interesting that whoscored says that both him & Kolo-Muani are weak at holding on to the ball. Not sure how true that actually is though.
 
Point being? Makes no difference, having the worst goalscoring record of the top 10 clubs and not winning away from home vs top half is not over-performing.
We came about where we were expected to given Liverpool and Chelseas poor season. UCL qualification was always the target after spending so much last summer
UCL qualification was not the expectation at all. Out of 23 BBC pundits 2 had us in fourth place. The others did not have us in top four.

The expectation was around 6th place. We came in third because we did better than expected.

I think you had unrealistic expectations and are projecting.
 
UCL qualification was not the expectation at all. Out of 23 BBC pundits 2 had us in fourth place. The others did not have us in top four.

The expectation was around 6th place. We came in third because we did better than expected.

I think you had unrealistic expectations and are projecting.

I had us coming in at 6th too. I think we are ahead of our development roadmap.
 
I had us coming in at 6th too. I think we are ahead of our development roadmap.
I had us at third because I thought we would overperform. I hope next season we do the same, although I worry we could miss top four.
 
He won’t be enough. I can’t complain about transfer dealings but we can’t expect Ten Hag to “mount” pardon the pun - a challenge with these reinforcements
He won't be, but given our financial issues, I'd rather pick up a young player with a high ceiling than noting at all. I also think we should try and pick up Toney in January after he serves his ban.
 
I don't think any of this has much to do with the comment I made about Hojlund settling in to the PL.

In any case I think its extremely optimistic that signing only Onana, Mount and Hojlund will get us 85-90 points next season.
I think he'll be fine adapting.

Players in Serie A aren't really any shorter, slower or weaker than their Premier League counterparts. They're just less aggressive with their pressing because of team tactics.

If you watch this video of Hojlund, he seems to get double and triple marked all the time and heavily pressured on every move. That's a decent test of his suitability for English football which I don't think you could say about any of our recent flops (Sancho, VdB, etc).


I think he'll take to the PL fairly quickly. He already plays like a PL player, if his highlights are anything to go by.
 
Sir Alex would not have had a 9 goals in the league 20 year old striker leading the line though.

Rooney was an absolute elite level youngster and even he wasn’t expected to come in and be the main man in attack. He had Ruud, Saha and Smith to shoulder the bulk of the responsibility.

SAF would be all in for Kane and Hojlund would be bought as a prospect not as our main striker.
Exactly. Rooney and Haaland are in no way comparable to this guy. It's insulting to them.
 
Sir Alex would not have had a 9 goals in the league 20 year old striker leading the line though.

Rooney was an absolute elite level youngster and even he wasn’t expected to come in and be the main man in attack. He had Ruud, Saha and Smith to shoulder the bulk of the responsibility.

SAF would be all in for Kane and Hojlund would be bought as a prospect not as our main striker.
Danny Welbeck was a 9 goal 20 year old striker leading the line for Sir Alex in 2011/12. He started 23 league games and came on in another 7.
 
Yes, but he isn't just a minor upgrade on him.

We don't know what the price is going to be. It could be a big add on or it could just be £50m straight.

Real Madrid bought a 16 year old Endrick for €35m + €25m add ons.

Barcelona just bought 18 year old Vitor Roque for €30m + €31m in potential add ons.

You gotta pay up for talented young strikers, especially when there's a lack of them in these days.
Why are these the comparisons? Look at who Barcelona and Real Madrid already have. Endrick and Roque will not have the pressure to start. Just like Rodrygo and Vinicius didn't.

Hojlund will and it'll tear him up. He's going to be chewed up and spit out trying to be the main striker for Man Utd when he couldn't manage to double digits in goals the previous season.
 
You did not. How do the transfers in the last 4 seasons look on the books? This window it's currently +100m Euros.
Okay fella. You convinced me with your flawless reasoning and logic. You’re right, we’re in FFP hell. We can’t spend a pound over 120m because if we do, we’re out of the Premier League and the Champions League. Thank you for showing me The Truth. :lol:
 
Sir Alex would not have had a 9 goals in the league 20 year old striker leading the line though.

Rooney was an absolute elite level youngster and even he wasn’t expected to come in and be the main man in attack. He had Ruud, Saha and Smith to shoulder the bulk of the responsibility.

SAF would be all in for Kane and Hojlund would be bought as a prospect not as our main striker.
Kane most likely isn’t available / willing to kick up a fuss or we don’t have the funds to afford him and his wages. People have to move on from Kane and Osimhen - it seems clear that they are beyond us this summer.

Given that, I’m not really invested in any potential CF as nobody stands out. As long as we don’t blow our load completely affecting future windows or sign old farts like Ighalo. I’m okay.
 
Okay fella. You convinced me with your flawless reasoning and logic. You’re right, we’re in FFP hell. We can’t spend a pound over 120m because if we do, we’re out of the Premier League and the Champions League. Thank you for showing me The Truth. :lol:
Most of us or even Journalist and so called experts have no idea what FFP restrictions are for United or how it impacts United they are just speculating .

And the thing is even assuming if we do breach spending restrictions as per FFP it's hardly end of the world we aren't getting thrown out of Champions League or be not allowed to buy players in future it would be slap on the wrist . Most likely our spend is just dictated by how much Glazers wants to release funds and FFP is just convenience excuse . My guess we spend around 150 m -170m even without selling anybody beyond that we rely on sales .
 
Really not sure what the endless obsession with saying we should buy him and a top level striker is. Fergie would have him and Kane! etc.
What part of "There are very few top level strikers available, and our awful owners will not stump up the funds even if there were" do people simply not understand, no matter how many times it is explained? These are the same owners who made our manager bring Weghorst in on loan rather than buying a decent striker in Jan.
From Kane to Osimhen to Ramos to Muani, they would all costs a minimum of 80M, and up to 130M for Osimhen. The club is not spending that much on a new striker.
2 strikers, one of which being a world class player, is not happening. Get over it.
 
Why are these the comparisons? Look at who Barcelona and Real Madrid already have. Endrick and Roque will not have the pressure to start. Just like Rodrygo and Vinicius didn't.

Hojlund will and it'll tear him up. He's going to be chewed up and spit out trying to be the main striker for Man Utd when he couldn't manage to double digits in goals the previous season.
Good point.

It would be great if we have a senior striker already, and we can slowly break him in like we did for Greenwood when we had Zlatan and Lukaku. But the issue this summer is the lack of funds. We simply don't have them to get in an experienced top strikers and a goal keeper. Unless we miracously started selling a number of players at a good price.
 
Regarding Lukaku, he had 42 goals in 96 appearances, which isn’t too bad. Of course, it always seemed like he couldn’t score when we needed him to score.

I think we should be a bit nervous paying 100m for anyone, even Kane. Those big money transfers frequently don’t work out. There was an article / study about this somewhere. A lot of 100m deals have gone tits up. Hazard, Lukaku to Chelsea, Felix, Griezmann, Coutinho, Dembele, Pogba, etc.
Imo paying 100m for Kane is actually safer than 60m for Hojlund. Kane is proven and he knows the league. But we don't have the 100m anyway so let's hope we can get something like 30m + 30m add ons for Hojlund.
 
Exactly. Rooney and Haaland are in no way comparable to this guy. It's insulting to them.
Yep. I think our rivals are kinda pissing themselves too, at the state of us. Weghorst in January and now a 20 year old with 9 goals in Seria A, as the face of our rebuild and title tilt. Hojland may turn out to be great. It's a massive gamble.

He may turn out like Timo Werner, 10 goals in 56.
Shevchenko, scored 28 goals in Serie A when he moved to Chelsea and couldn't buy a goal for love nor money. 9 league goals in 2 years. fecking Shevchenko couldn't hack the prem!
Fernando Morientes (CL winner 3X) flopped at Liverpool moving from Spain.
Mario Jardel scored 42 league goals in the season before moving to Bolton, and he never scored in the PL (only cup games, 3 goals).
Soldado had 30 goals in 46 appearances for Valencia, moved to Spurs, and left 2 years later having scored 7.
Pizzaro had scored 100 goals at Bayern, moved to Chelsea on a free, scored 2 in 21 games, and was shipped out.

These players above had already physically matured, and didn't need to add mass or muscle or whatever, and had several seasons as starters, and were prolific scorers. They were known quantities. There are lots of lots of examples, I don't know why Hojland's case is unique. I don't see the reason for the hype. He's a good prospect, sure, but is he break-the-bank, lead the line for United good?

2023 Serie top scorers** :

PlayerGoalsAppearancesAge
Osimhen263224
L. Martinez213825
Dia163326
Leao153524
Giroud153336
Lookman133125
Nzola133226
Kvaratskhelia123422
Sanabria123327

PlayerGoalsAppearancesAge
Immobile123133
Berardi122628
Sanabria123327
Dybala122529
Orsolini113226
Zaccagni103528
Koopmeiners103325
Beto103325
Lukaku102530
Vlahovic102723
PlayerGoalsAppearancesAge
Arnautovic.....102134
Hojland93220


**Yes, this is not a break down of goals per minute, and these players don't all play the same position as Hojland.

Hojland is the youngest of the lot, but most of these players have years left in 'em (not Immobile, Giroud, Arnautovic). Hojland's 9 goals seem to be worth a lot more than the other players' higher tallies.
 
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I don't think buying Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo at 40m each are bad examples.

And we have already wasted more than Real Madrid over past 5-7 years regardless.
And that's why we are short on cash whereas Madrid are still buying expensive players every year without caring much about how they perform. So yeah, Madrid can splash another 50m on a 9 year old south American and it won't affect them.

That's not the case for us.
 
Yep. I think our rivals are kinda pissing themselves too, at the state of us. Weghorst in January and now a 20 year old with 9 goals in Seria A, as the face of our rebuild and title tilt. Hojland may turn out to be great. It's a massive gamble.

He may turn out like Timo Werner, 10 goals in 56.
Shevchenko, scored 28 goals in Serie A when he moved to Chelsea and couldn't buy a goal for love nor money. 9 league goals in 2 years. fecking Shevchenko couldn't hack the prem!
Fernando Morientes (CL winner 3X) flopped at Liverpool moving from Spain.
Mario Jardel scored 42 league goals in the season before moving to Bolton, and he never scored in the PL (only cup games, 3 goals).
Soldado had 30 goals in 46 appearances for Valencia, moved to Spurs, and left 2 years later having scored 7.
Pizzaro had scored 100 goals at Bayern, moved to Chelsea on a free, scored 2 in 21 games, and was shipped out.

These players above had already physically matured, and didn't need to add mass or muscle or whatever, and had several seasons as starters, and were prolific scorers. They were known quantities. There are lots of lots of examples, I don't know why Hojland's case is unique. I don't see the reason for the hype. He's a good prospect, sure, but is he break-the-bank, lead the line for United good?

2023 Serie top scorers** :

PlayerGoalsAppearancesAge
Osimhen263224
L. Martinez213825
Dia163326
Leao153524
Giroud153336
Lookman133125
Nzola133226
Kvaratskhelia123422
Sanabria123327

PlayerGoalsAppearancesAge
Immobile123133
Berardi122628
Sanabria123327
Dybala122529
Orsolini113226
Zaccagni103528
Koopmeiners103325
Beto103325
Lukaku102530
Vlahovic102723
PlayerGoalsAppearancesAge
Arnautovic.....102134
Hojland93220


**Yes, this is not a break down of goals per minute, and these players don't all play the same position as Hojland.

Hojland is the youngest of the lot, but most of these players have years left in 'em (not Immobile, Giroud, Arnautovic). Hojland's 9 goals seem to be worth a lot more than the other players' higher tallies.
Which of our rivals are pissing themselves? The two who finished ahead of us or the others who finished behind us, this past season. If we sign this chap he isn’t going to be the FACE of our rebuild and title challenge. ETH is the face of our rebuild and for players you have Casmiero, Martinez, Mount and many others too. We aren’t challenging this season so this chap isn’t the face of that either.
 
UCL qualification was not the expectation at all. Out of 23 BBC pundits 2 had us in fourth place. The others did not have us in top four.

The expectation was around 6th place. We came in third because we did better than expected.

I think you had unrealistic expectations and are projecting.

Most of them had Liverpool and Chelsea ahead so we came higher than expected. However we didn’t really overperform in league as already mentioned.

Opinions anyway. I had us with an outside chance of making top 4 and that was always the target from both club and manager. There were not 5 better squads in the league than ours at the close of the window
 
Looks every bit a target man type of forward. Good at hold up play, uses his body well to shield, good short link up play and fairly mobile but not rapid. Very different to names I've seen in comparison, like Haaland and Rooney. Rooney was a completely different player, and Haaland is far more direct, more physical and a lot quicker too.

He looks a bit like a poor man's version of Kane when Kane drops deep to link up. He just obviously doesn't have the goal scoring prowess of Kane right now.

Interesting that ETH seems hell bent on bringing back in a target man type of CF.
 
Looks every bit a target man type of forward. Good at hold up play, uses his body well to shield, good short link up play and fairly mobile but not rapid. Very different to names I've seen in comparison, like Haaland and Rooney. Rooney was a completely different player, and Haaland is far more direct, more physical and a lot quicker too.

He looks a bit like a poor man's version of Kane when Kane drops deep to link up. He just obviously doesn't have the goal scoring prowess of Kane right now.

Interesting that ETH seems hell bent on bringing back in a target man type of CF.
His hold up play and link up looks strong - doesn’t come across as a 20 year old. How’s his ability to aggressively attack crosses / aerial duels?
 
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