Many others have written this over and over. We’ve brought in a striker who wasn’t ready for we’re putting him through.
11
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 38
- Goals
- 11
- Assists
- 2
- Yellow cards
- 2
This why SAF used to be strikers horny all the time and used to have 3 to 4 top strikers, so we could rotate and not rely on one striker only if he was having tough time.
secondly he mostly signed from the EPL. Because they don’t need to get accustomed to the league.
I think we should have gone for Ferguson or Watkins or Tony who I feel are better positioned at this stage to do well the league. Hojlund looks daunted like a deer in the headlights here, for 70 odd million Lukaku looks a better buy in the hindsight, which is sad tbf because I didn’t like Lukaku and felt he was very limited player but he could score against weaker teams (flat track bully), aerially he was better and he had this ability to make space and get his shots in, which Hojlund seems unable to do and appears to be heavily reliant on service.
For 70 million I believe we have heavily overpaid and we should have moved on the moment the price tag was above 40m.
secondly he mostly signed from the EPL. Because they don’t need to get accustomed to the league.
I think we should have gone for Ferguson or Watkins or Tony who I feel are better positioned at this stage to do well the league. Hojlund looks daunted like a deer in the headlights here, for 70 odd million Lukaku looks a better buy in the hindsight, which is sad tbf because I didn’t like Lukaku and felt he was very limited player but he could score against weaker teams (flat track bully), aerially he was better and he had this ability to make space and get his shots in, which Hojlund seems unable to do and appears to be heavily reliant on service.
For 70 million I believe we have heavily overpaid and we should have moved on the moment the price tag was above 40m.
If Hojlund looks daunted like a deer in the headlights and is unable to do things as you say how do you explain the wildly different reactions in this thread at the beginning of the season to now, his difference in play from the beginning of the season to now, and the fact he is still our joint second top scorer this season - this is something people seem to be forgetting or wilfully ignoring because it doesn’t suit the narrative. Hojlund is so god damn awful but has scored more than all but 2 players in this team, one of which is McTominay and the other is Bruno, perhaps everyone is just playing dogshit at the moment and with 0 confidence rather than him being a total waste of money a few months in?
Will be delighted to be proven wrong on him but I just cannot see it.
Has had the odd good game and scored one quality goal, but yesterday's performance looked a million miles off. Irretrievable off.
There is plenty of dogshit in our team, no doubt about it, but it should not be used as an excuse.
Young player has confidence sapped away from him as he plays increasingly like a deer in headlights.
Badly needs a mentor and improve on his movement and anticipation. Some time away from the spotlight would be nice. We need a more senior striker.
Badly needs a mentor and improve on his movement and anticipation. Some time away from the spotlight would be nice. We need a more senior striker.
I agree that blame is misdirected at the kid and he is being failed by the club.
Firstly, the boy is being misprofiled. He was playing as a split striker in 3-5-2 for Atalanta where he could peel out wide and use his pace. Here, we made assumptions about what type of role is best suited to him based on his frame and we have him trying to hold the ball up and be a target man which he doesn’t have the maturity for just yet. That’s not really his fault. Even Haaland and young Lukaku lacked in this part of their game. Playing with your back to goal and bringing others into play is a skill by itself that requires a combination of strength and technical quality and Hojlund hasn’t learned how to marry them yet. But whereas Haaland and young Lukaku’s weaknesses in this regard were hidden by the fact they would play on the shoulder of the last defender and be devestating using their speed, Hojlund is constantly backing up into older and more experienced defenders who love this part of the game and outfox him by constantly imbalance him by moving their bodies away at opportune times.
What can we do moving forward to bring the best out of him? The boy clearly has talent which he showed in Europe. He has a powerful shot, decent nimble feet and searing pace. This is why I suggest he is given a shot playing as an RW a la Bale. He would surely get his confidence back just battering full-backs with his physical strengths. While his feet are a bit clumsly, as we saw in the goal vs Galatasaray, if kicks it past you and turns it into a foot chase, he isn’t getting caught.
Currently he is just being memed as the 0 in 14 player that is “waiting for a miracle to cooooome”. Those numbers do not represent him at all because this system still doesn’t create chances f. It’s reported that we are in for an older striker to lift the burden of responsibility off him but what if that striker struggles too? Did you know that Hojland and Weghorst are 0 in 31 combined? Our CF is as much as a graveyard as our GK and DM positions.
Nothing has changed with regards to our chance creation struggles since the start of the season. If we’re not going to buy midfielders in January what is going to change moving forward? Do we think Lisandro’s return will improve chance creation from centre-half (if he’s still the same player he was)? It’s really hard to be optimistic at this point.
We need to let Hojlund off the hook. He is only a symptom rather than the cause of our current malaise!
he's a Frankfurt/Rennes level striker atm that is being expected to play like prime United striker simply because someone above him thought he could.
Very good post, as was the one further up, looking at the Ferguson-build up at Brighton. I do understand the frustrations from the fans here though. Højlund is worth nothing in the team right now. We might as well play without a striker at all, or tell him to fall back and help out in midfield. He is useless in the box, when noone plays the ball in there. the opposition box is our Bermuda Triangle right now. I used to analyze football on a professional level for years and I have never seen a more dysfunctional attacking play in a top club than this right now. It is embarassing to watch. My expected goals yesterday was a big fat zero.
Højlund, Sesko and Ferguson are surely among the most talented young strikers in the world right now, but the difference in building them are worlds apart. Sesko is getting 15-20 minutes at the end of games and looks good in a clearly thought out system. Leipzig is playing with two strikers, and Sesko is being brought up by Openda and Poulsen. He has already overtaken Timo Werner in the process. That is the way to do it. The situation with Højlund is diffferent. We have no Openda, Poulsen or Werner. We have Martial and wingers who hates crossing the ball. Højlund is lost, and so is EtHs plan. The dutchman needs to be sacked ASAP for not seing that his system does not work. Will Højlund get better when Casemiro, Martinez and Eriksen returns? Yes, and so will the rest of the team. Will he break the duck? Yes. In a functioning team, he is absolutely capable of scoring lots of goals, even at this stage. The CL stats are no fluke. He IS the real deal. At 20 there will be ups and downs though. Anything else would be exeptional or just Haaland. We need wingers in the january window, and I would love to see Højlund with a second striker who is willing to do pressing. Garnacho could do it in this squad, as could Rashford, if he was to be bothered trying.
Ffs man Garnacho got a lucky fluke goal against Everton. Other than that he has been missing sitters again and again and Antony has done nothing. Kane wouldn't get any assist because the wingers Ten Hag prefers are shite.Other players? It doesn't need to be assist (by the FPL law) At least create a chance for someone.
So the Rooney goal against City all those years ago was a fluke as well??
It's just a tricky situation. The team have paid a lot and need him to perform, but this could easily be a Salah or deBruyne situation, he is just not quite there yet.
The mistake was not buying him and Kane together and instead brining in Mount, Amrabat and Onana, none of whom have improved us. You cannot tell me that Hojlund learning from the best striker on the planet would not have been helpful for his development. Instead he has Rashford and Martial, two players I would prefer he didn't mimic.
The mistake was not buying him and Kane together and instead brining in Mount, Amrabat and Onana, none of whom have improved us. You cannot tell me that Hojlund learning from the best striker on the planet would not have been helpful for his development. Instead he has Rashford and Martial, two players I would prefer he didn't mimic.
Yeah good points and in fact, it's extremely common for young, non prodigious strikers to start wide, learn their craft as well as strengthen up (they nearly always have the tools to play as a wide attacker) out wide before coming infield and finally centralising in the chaos.
Playing with back to goal is usually the very last phase for pacey attackers who usually learn their craft off-shoulder of CB's rather than crashing into them. Van Persie, Henry, Bergkamp, Shearer, Shevchenko and so many more either started outright wide or as rapid attackers using pace over power. Shearer is the PL archetype in terms of stages, even. At Southampton, he was a searing striker running off CB's all game and avoiding tussles for as much of a game as possible. He became that battling brawler when he did his knee and was no longer so fast and rounded out as the hold up type in his last transformational stage after he'd honed his craft.
Asking strikers to play as we want is, as you say, a rare skill and craft in itself, which you won't find many 20-year olds throughout history who are considered the cream of the crop in the art of goalscoring really sublime at so young, let alone a moderately talented youngster just dropped at our feet from an inferior league to a team who play such incoherent, service-starved football. We'd need Mark Hughes up there to make the ball stick with how bad we are at bringing the CF into the play.
A lot of off-shoulder types will never be anything special with their back to goal, so it's not a given that'll ever be a quality Højlund has in abundance. If we wanted that kind of player, we should have been scouring the market for one. It'd more than likely not be a 20-year old with such a profile! Anyone up to date on the world game: it'd be interesting to see how many good or great hold up CF's you can name who are under 25.
CF is a graveyard for us because you'd need to be an exceptional forward to do all we ask with the service we provide. Really out of this world good.
It's the manager and the club who should be condemned for this shambles because Højlund has no business being in this predicament in the first place. And he's not getting the education needed to hone his game as we go along. In fact, his confidence and overall performance level is dwindling. Shambolic is the word that comes to mind in terms of how this kid has been handled. I think playing him wide is a better tonic than leaving him where he is especially so if McTominay is to be persisted with.
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
Pretty sure most wanted Rashford dropped
It has been widely reported that him and Rasmus where doing drills together outside of team training. Rasmus has looked twice the player with Rashford.
I was extremely frustrated yesterday when Ten Hag took of Rasmus for Rashford instead of the logical thing, which was take of Garnacho and let Rashford and Højlund play together.
Please dont tell me you are comparing Rooney and Garnacho....
In the Rasmus thread...
For what it's worth my opinion hasn't changed over the last 6-8 weeks. He needs to get involved in the game when he isn't getting any joy playing on the shoulder. No top striker these days just runs off the shoulder. He has to come deep, create other triangles and overloads and then bust a gut to get into the box. I think he would be a better prospect in a team with wingers. I keep reading that he is getting no service from our wingers. I would argue we are not playing with any. Rashford, Antony and Garnacho are inside forwards. They take up positions out side and drift inside. Rasmus should be coming out to them and playing 1-2's and creating problem for the full backs. Instead he's hovering around the D with no service.
If he cannot hack it at ours, we should sell him so that we don't ruin his career and we also cut our losses.
The coaching team must make a quick decision as to whether he can be what we need him to be in the next 1-2 years.
We can't be waiting 5-6 years and then realise he's just the next Martial.
The coaching team must make a quick decision as to whether he can be what we need him to be in the next 1-2 years.
We can't be waiting 5-6 years and then realise he's just the next Martial.
Martial was much better than Hojlund in their debut seasons.
Martial just stagnated in his development later on and then couldn't stay fit.
Or Zaha...
I don't understand how they conceptualized this attack and thought it was ever going to work.
Rashford-Hojlund-Antony, would appear to have been the plan in pre-season, but they had evidence that the 2 wide players had minimal ability to be creative for others at PL level. Even Rash at his best is a limited version of Ronaldo, cut in and look to shoot with little awareness of his teammates, other than a short spell when he and Martial linked together effectively. Antony's dire assist total last season was unlikely to radically change given how poor his crossing and final pass was. You add Hojlund to that who is a fairly one dimensional runner into the space behind with very limited ability to interchange and link.
Rashford falling off a cliff has brought in Garnacho who at this stage is an inferior version of Rashford with the same tunnel vision and poor choices. There is no playmaking ability in the front 3 whatsoever, was this why Ten Hag was so set on Bruno and Mount to start the season? And somehow didn't understand how it would unbalance midfield and defensive transitions?
I think to the experiments with Sancho as a false 9 in pre season, with that he must have had an awareness that we needed more ball creativity, vision and composure in the front 3, if we get a short term loan signing, or Jan permanent it needs to be someone who can play with their back to goal, hold the ball up, link with the midfield, let the wide players make runs off that link up, not another poacher with a limited all round game.
The current set up doesn't suit any of the attackers and is making them all look worse than they are.
Rashford-Hojlund-Antony, would appear to have been the plan in pre-season, but they had evidence that the 2 wide players had minimal ability to be creative for others at PL level. Even Rash at his best is a limited version of Ronaldo, cut in and look to shoot with little awareness of his teammates, other than a short spell when he and Martial linked together effectively. Antony's dire assist total last season was unlikely to radically change given how poor his crossing and final pass was. You add Hojlund to that who is a fairly one dimensional runner into the space behind with very limited ability to interchange and link.
Rashford falling off a cliff has brought in Garnacho who at this stage is an inferior version of Rashford with the same tunnel vision and poor choices. There is no playmaking ability in the front 3 whatsoever, was this why Ten Hag was so set on Bruno and Mount to start the season? And somehow didn't understand how it would unbalance midfield and defensive transitions?
I think to the experiments with Sancho as a false 9 in pre season, with that he must have had an awareness that we needed more ball creativity, vision and composure in the front 3, if we get a short term loan signing, or Jan permanent it needs to be someone who can play with their back to goal, hold the ball up, link with the midfield, let the wide players make runs off that link up, not another poacher with a limited all round game.
The current set up doesn't suit any of the attackers and is making them all look worse than they are.
I wonder how good Rasmus is in training and how much the other players trust in him. Let's be honest, he showed nothing more than potential in Italy, and he's done nothing in the PL (from a finishing perspective) to suggest he's improved on that. So if he can't hit a barn door in a 5-a-side or shooting practice, how are the players around him going to play to him on a Saturday?
I'm not saying he's shit. But aside from his CL goals, it's easy to see him as a younger version of Weghorst with a burst of pace, ie he likes a physical battle, can do a bit of hold up, but can't finish for toffee.
I'm not saying he's shit. But aside from his CL goals, it's easy to see him as a younger version of Weghorst with a burst of pace, ie he likes a physical battle, can do a bit of hold up, but can't finish for toffee.
Should have stayed in Italy for another season
If the ball keeps bouncing off him, the team will be reluctant to pass to him. You can clearly see with McT there are situations were the team are not comfortable giving him the ball, we may have the same issue with Hojlund.
I watched the analysis on MOTD last night. It became glaringly obvious that the crosses for Hojlund from Garnacho and Antony are virtually non existent. Hence the lack of goals.
It still concerns me that we have players still wandering about, not chasing back. No urgency.
It still concerns me that we have players still wandering about, not chasing back. No urgency.
It’s fair to criticize Højlund for being late in the box on crosses. We’ve seen it a handful of times now. I also think some criticism needs to go the other way as well. Yesterday he was late for a low cross by Antony from the right. It’s something Antony almost never does, so why would Højlund anticipate it? There is no chemistry between him and the wingers, and very little quality out wide.
I honestly think a top class striker would struggle with this bunch of creative players. A better striker might be able to create some shots for himself, and Højlund is not good enough for that, and not that type of player. Either way, it wouldn’t be enough to get a good goal tally.
I honestly think a top class striker would struggle with this bunch of creative players. A better striker might be able to create some shots for himself, and Højlund is not good enough for that, and not that type of player. Either way, it wouldn’t be enough to get a good goal tally.
So much talk about lack of service but can someone explain how his runs are any good? I always see him parked in the middle of the box surrounded by 2-3 defenders for a cut back.
The small times I see a near post run, he's been found, eg rashfords cutback at Anfield, and he doesn't gamble for a tap in.
His movement isn't 'bad' but it's definitely overrated. As is his hold up play.
The small times I see a near post run, he's been found, eg rashfords cutback at Anfield, and he doesn't gamble for a tap in.
His movement isn't 'bad' but it's definitely overrated. As is his hold up play.
I remember this. Antony put in a first time cross with his right foot. Højlund had checked his run, and maybe if he hadn't he would have reached it.
I find it hard to blame him too much though. He's probably made that run a thousand times since he joined, and the cross either wasn't good enough or never came.
There's very little to be exited about with him. The technical quality just isn't there.
I think movement thing started when he was pressing a lot in his first few games (which he doesn't even do anymore). Some fans obviously mix pure movement (running a lot) with true movement (being at right place at right time).
Movement is about disorientating the opposition players to make space for either yourself or a team mate. Right place at right time is reading a pass or attempted defensive reaction to it. They are not quite the same thing (in my opinion of course).
Rashford-Højlund-Greenwood.
I don’t see how that helps Højlund, but I think the plan was for Greenwood to be the main striker and the Dane rotated in/out if Greenwood went to RWF or when rested.
Our fan base were comparing Ronaldo and Garnacho last season, this is no surprise.
Overhyped Hojlund as a world class talent for barging into players in his debut and this is what you get.
Maybe he will turn out good cause he is young, and as we know from previous experience every young player turns out to be good, but if it wasn’t for Wout last season, he is the worst United main striker I have ever had the misfortune of watching.
I have no idea what did the scouts see that I cannot see. He is very weak physically despite being quite big, he does not make good runs (or any runs for that matter), his technique makes Lukaku’s look great, he is relatively fast but not rapid, and his finishing is awful. Also he does not even try to win aerial duels.
I would have understood this signing for 10-15m, a bit how I got the signings of the likes of Bebe or Obertan (usually they do not work but once in a while you get a Chicharito), but for that price this signing was an utter madness.
I have no idea what did the scouts see that I cannot see. He is very weak physically despite being quite big, he does not make good runs (or any runs for that matter), his technique makes Lukaku’s look great, he is relatively fast but not rapid, and his finishing is awful. Also he does not even try to win aerial duels.
I would have understood this signing for 10-15m, a bit how I got the signings of the likes of Bebe or Obertan (usually they do not work but once in a while you get a Chicharito), but for that price this signing was an utter madness.
I havent seen anyone calling Højlund a world class talent. Merely a very big striker talent, which is absolutely still true. As a dane I just hope we dont completely destroy the talent.
You have clearly only seen him here. He has been bad here and the setup and our wingers are the worst enemy of any striker, yet alone a young raw talent.
If we stick with the current setup of Garnacho and Antony there is no reason to play any striker.
He is definitely raw, but I am very doubtful that he is a talent. There is not a single attribute of him that I can say to be elite, or even above average (maybe he is above average when it comes to pace but that is it).
He is the typical backup striker of some team like Crystal Palace or Fulham that makes news cause he scored a brace at 19, but you know that he has a journeyman career written over him.
It’s what our fan base does, won’t be surprised to see people here saying Kambwala is better than Lindelof. Only for the former to end up playing for Charlton.
Hojlund doesn’t show enough movement, as much as we can blame the service. We get to the final third and there’s no movement from anyone and we hit and hope a cross which will most likely be cleared. When Cavani was playing he’d create chances just by being sharp.