There’s clinical Strikers all over Europe. When I say 20-25 goals that’s in all competitions not just the league. Even if we had a striker that got us 17 league goals then that’s a massive improvement aslong as we have other players that contribute to goals aswell which we do with Bruno, Garnacho, Amad.
I’m confident that Hojlund could easily give us 17 in the league next season if we keep improving as a team. People tend to underrate his performances last season and put too much emphasis on his crisis this season.
Let’s look at it - and no, it’s not an excuse or a legitimisation of his fee. It’s an attempt at a coherent argument for my opinion of him:
He came to United at 20 yo after just one year of football in a top 5 league - following half a year in Austria and close to no minutes in the Danish league before that. That’s the first point - you rarely see players with a trajectory like that. The fact that three top clubs in Austria, Italy and England (where other top clubs were after him as well) saw enough talent to take a chance on him - the general consensus in the football world was that he was one of the most talented young forwards in Europe. That wasn’t primarily based on his number of goals, but on his physical abilities, pace, drive, finishing and not least the combination of confidence and team player mentality - the prospect was that he’d become very good sooner rather than later.
When he came here he scored a couple of well taken goals that was unfortunately disallowed due to no fault of his. He showed good physicality as well and then he got injured. When he returned he didn’t play as well for some time, but started scoring again and ended up with 10 league goals putting him in the 50 % bracket of strikers when measuring goals / minute played and as one of the very best finishers in the league scoring a goal every 4 shots he took and every second shot on goal - that’s elite.
But, and this is perhaps the most important point, he did all that:
1. In his debut season
2. In a dysfunctional team
3. Without service. He basically made most of the goals himself and served Garnacho and Bruno big chances even though it wasn’t reciprocated. Had those two players put their chances away, Hojlund would’ve had more assists as well.
All that considered his first season was very good. But if you look at number of goals in itself of course you’d think it’s just about acceptable for a new United-striker.
So, young players have ups and downs. This season we’ve been going through a crisis as a team and played even worse than last season. Hojlund is young and needs to be played in the right way ie. in the channels and crosses into the box. He’s good at running the channels, but it doesn’t work when we use him as a focal point, and he needs practice in matches to improve his movement in the box. As long as we don’t provide that regularly through clear patterns of play he will have a hard time. Our last two games we’ve improved and so it’s very logical that Hojlund has improved as well.
Whether he’s ready to lead the line is another question and tbf I think a matter of expectations in the short and long term. Maybe, and that’s a big maybe, a more experienced 100 mio. striker could provide us with more goals next season. But the defining factor of our success will be how much Amorim can improve our general play in his system and our defence.
