What’s the case for us though? Buying overpriced average players instead?
I mean Ramos is available at around 80-100m. Looks more like our type of signing.
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Rasmus Højlund | Signed for United
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
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I mean Ramos is available at around 80-100m. Looks more like our type of signing.
I'm just going off those full game highlights posted on the previous page with what I'm saying, didn't see much of that in those videos other than him winning a few flick ons from aerial balls outside the box. His hold up looks strong but one thing that concerns me is that the CBs from top to bottom clubs in the PL are generally all physically imposing and quite athletic. If they were to choose a type of CF to play against it would be this. Put them against a very quick or very skilful striker and I think that's where they struggle a bit more. Haaland thrives because he is just as strong or stronger, and quicker, than most CBs. Not sure if that's the case with Hojlund.
Seems strong and quick to me.
Hojlund is much better technically and bringing others to play than let's say Haaland. He loves to play on the LW and create deadly opportunities. He prepared a lot of the from LW but he had crap teammates so that's why he does not have more assists.
Not sure if I said it before but he actually reminds be of Van Persie a bit.
Presume he's not as good in the box / as a finisher but that's what I think every time I see clips of him.
Presume he's not as good in the box / as a finisher but that's what I think every time I see clips of him.
Exactly who he reminds me of stylistically. But of course lots to prove on a higher level.
Tbh this is one of the reasons make me uneasy about this deal. I couldn't remember a single striker from Serie A that did well after a move to another league in the last 10 years or so. Immobile flopped massively at Dortmund, in a league that supposedly easier than the serie A.
Then they say the Italians know how to defend but it's true they have stopped producing good defenders there for a while. 36 yo Giroud still doing just fine there. Lukaku as well. Those stuffs simply make you doubt the quality of the defenders there.
Face of the rebuild? Go one step and say he will be the face of the club and will be given 10% of the club's shares too.
Also which rivals will be pissing themselves? The Liverpool team that trusted CF who scored 10 and 11 league goals for them? Who also played key role in their CL and league campaigns.
Or Arsenal who signed CF who scored 8 and 9 league goals in last 2 seasons and then ended up scoring 11 league goals.
Or Newcastle who signed CF who scored 8, 14, 8, 6, 5 league goals before they signed him, signed CF for big fee who scored 6 league goals last season when they signed them and scored 6, 17, 9 league goals in la liga and 0 in Bundesliga.
It's not like our rival teams have signed CFs who scored shit loads of goals. There are only few CFs who scores lot of goals, few of them are not available to sign for us for various reasons and few of them are not good enough for various reasons like play style, age.
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Ibrahimovic did alright after leaving Serie A. Crespo was decent at Chelsea as well, although I think he was injured a lot.
RvP cost £24 million in 2012 which wasn't a lot more than Liverpool paid for Joe Allen or City paid for Javi Garcia (or twice as much as City paid for Rodwell or Sunderland paid for Steven Fletcher) - in other words, he wasn't that expensive. And he was a year younger than Kane. The problem was that RvP had one brilliant season for us, and after that it was all downhill. He had 2 ok seasons and then he was gone.
We can't afford to spend £100 million on Kane in addition to his wages and risk him being brilliant for 1-2 seasons and then the injuries or his age turns him into just a good striker, rather than a brilliant striker. Will Kane score 25 goals for us if we sign him ? Oh yes - he will probably do it next year as well. But after that he might be worth next to nothing - and we cant risk that. We have too many aging players, and we can't sign one more. At least not for that amount of money. Of course Højlund wont score as many as Kane, but in 2-3 years, he might be a 20-goals a season striker and be worth £100 million. It's a far better investment than Kane
It’s starting to get to the point for me that I hope we sign him just so it will shut some of the people up who are constantly moaning about his goal tally or why we aren’t signing Kane or Osimhen despite it being explained to them a thousand times. We don’t deserve a talented young player
Its the "Daddy, I want, I want" fans who dont understand why we cant sign Kane or Oshimen.
The same fans who will want us to sign them, will also criticise why we spending 120m on a 30 year old 6 months later.
Despite being young it's clearly visible to me that Hojlund is better fit for us than Oshimen. His linkup play is better, he's quicker and looks like a smarter guy as soon as he gains more experience.
Having said that, ideal scenario is to sell Martial and bring 2 strikers this Summer, for example Jonathan David is available for around 60m EUR according to reports.
Yeah I dont think we will be doing smart business like that.
The biggest issue we have is selling, in theory, it sounds like the right thing to do, but we just cannot sell Martial, the club make selling players look impossible.
I won't be surprised if Martial starts our first PL game.
I think people need to get away from the idea of some sort of marquee signing firing us to success. Ten Hag is improving the squad and we should expect the overall team to improve because of it. If everyone below Rashford contributed a few more goals and some GK howlers didn't happen, we could have won more last season and challenged.
His top speed is fast but his acceleration seems average.
The last 10 years mate. And imo it's safe to say Ibra belong to the period where Serie A was still the best league around.
Yep. If instead of having Weghorst for 25 odd games he started, we had a combination of Hojlund and Martial (granted he seems like something is actually physically wrong with him) there will be big difference in goal threat, running in behind etc that we completely did not have.
Ah, fair enough. Well Salah came from Roma, and he's done pretty well...
There just aren't any ready made CFs out there mate. Even Osimhen would be a punt from Serie A, just a very expensive one.
We need to sign someone and it's not going to be top shelf, so it'll have to be a talent to nurture. That could obviously go either way, but tbh it's what the club has always done, and normally we've been more successful at it than when we've brought in ready made stars.
It seems that the excuses just keep changing. What exactly is the worry about his transfer? Is it his price, his age, or the incredibly colossal pressure it is to replace Weghorst for United and how he inevitably will fail, lose all of his confidence and play for Exeter City in two years?
Are you forgetting that we have both Rashford and Martial to play striker? I have no doubt in my mind that Martial will play most of the time, and when he inevitably gets injured or lazy, Højlund will take over. If he doesn't do well, we can always play Rashford there and Garnacho/Sancho on left.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DLbT9PLmhyM
This does not show his acceleration as average in my opinion, I believe his stride is tricking people
While your wider point around Serie A strikers might be true, I wouldn't really put him in the bracket of an Immobile who had a substantial body of work in Serie A and who was brought up in that culture of football. When you play in a league that long you are inevitably going to develop a suitability and playstyle around that. Then it becomes an issue of whether they have the ability to develop their game or become suited elsewhere.
That's not really Hojlund. Not long since he was playing at Copenhagen! Which isn't exactly a support of his proven ability but what it says is that this 20 year old is on an upward trajectory. There is an ability to mould a player like this that there perhaps isn't for established players.
For me it's not about league it's about potential and quality. That's what we have to get right as a recruitment team.
He'd only need 5 goals to be an improvement on Weghorst, provided he stretches the play and holds the ball up. He's naturally going to improve, we just don't know at what rate, so I am happy to spread the load around the team.
Ibra belongs to the era when Serie A started to decline and both La Liga and esepcially the PL became better.
Yeah, im not sure why people are raising his speed or acceleration as an issue. He is sub 11 for 100m and there appears to be plenty of footage of him having no issues leaving players in the dust, of all the things you could potentially say against him his physical attributes are really not one of them.
Agile methods are big on focus and managing WIP though (one at a time) - we might just be too agile
God I wish we had him all over again.
Yeah you got a point here mate. I totally forgot about this guy.
I have an Inter mate and according to him the quality there is so shit now that he only watches Inter games and the rest of the wk he watches PL games. He hasn't even heard about Hojlund when I asked him how is this lad ...
Yeah that's why he left to Barca and later PSG I think. But I don't think we should use him as a an example of Serie A strikers in the last 10 years. He left the Serie A like ages ago I couldn't even remember when.
To be honest, this sounds more like an issue that your mate doesn't really follow Atalanta rather than anything to do with Højlund. Any Serie A watcher that doesn't know who Højlund is, is either lying or doesn't really follow it.
Premier League watchers know who Alexander Isak is.
I've made it quite clear he is an Inter fan who only watches Inter matches I think.
Then there are PL fans who don't watch much serie A games and they have heard his name.
I haven't watched a single Atalanta game this season and even i heard about this player, even before we were linked with this player.
I can't help but get excited by this guy, his interplay, quick feet, willingness to run in behind or drift to create space is exactly what we've been missing.
Yes he's quite young but that to me is perfect as EtH can mold him into the perfect player for his system.
I can see our front line gel very quickly with this guy in the mix as he doesn't seem keen to come short and occupy space but rather hold the line on the CB and try to get in behind as often as possible.
It depends I think. I haven't heard about this lad before we're linked with him.
Tbh it was quite a surprise for me when my mate told me he has never heard of Hojlund as well. It's not like Hojlund played only one or two matches there.
My mate is a really big Inter fan and football fan in general and has supported Inter for at least 20 years I think. He doesn't only watch Serie A, PL but La Liga and some in the Bundes too and had to subscribe to like three different packages in order to be able to watch all that. He knows a lot about football and I often ask him about players in the other leagues as well not only Serie A.
His performance vs Lazio looks good, proper striker.
His game with back to goal is good, agile for player of his size and decent dribbling skills too.
His game with back to goal is good, agile for player of his size and decent dribbling skills too.
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The last No.9's we've brought to the club btw. Surely people cannot complain against a young hungry striker with brilliant potential for a change
Why isn't Martial on that list? We signed him as a 19 year old
Conveniently missing Antony Martial? Wasn’t he 19?
He wasn't bought as a 9.
Yes he was. He was given the 9 shirt as soon as he was signed.
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