Lukaku is literally twice the striker that Hojlund is
9
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Lukaku is levels above Hojlund. The absolute best case for Hojlund was for him to be a lesser version of Lukaku who maybe worked a little harder.
Typical Utd though, Lukaku didn't have enough, but we keep replacing these guys with inferior players and keep spiraling down. Yes, I know Hojlund did not directly replace Lukaku but our recruitment has consistently made Utd weaker over the last 12 years.
LVG started it when shipping out a ton of squad players just to replace them with more squad players who were not as good and didn't have that Utd grit.
Typical Utd though, Lukaku didn't have enough, but we keep replacing these guys with inferior players and keep spiraling down. Yes, I know Hojlund did not directly replace Lukaku but our recruitment has consistently made Utd weaker over the last 12 years.
LVG started it when shipping out a ton of squad players just to replace them with more squad players who were not as good and didn't have that Utd grit.
But can we think of a younger starting No.9 in United's history?
There is at least some link between the two.
Just because he's young, doesn't mean he'll be good enough one day. Yamine Lamal is young, generational talent agreed, but you can be young enough AND good enough.
Hojlund is massively overrated and simply isn't good enough for United and likely never will be imo.
How can he be overrated when everyone thinks he’s crap?
True.
But I think it almost guarantees he won't be ready to start for United as a 9 and will ultimately disappoint.
That stat about Delpa being the top U23 goalscorer as a 9 across England, Italy and Spain really highlighted it.
Young strikers don't score much.
You think back to Liverpool getting Fowler and Owen through within a couple of years of each other. Crazy stuff.
It's not about goals for me with Hojlund - it's about his natural ability, his positoning, his awareness, his bite - he has little of all of those. He can score the odd good goal, I'm sure, but you need so much more which he doesn't have.
So many saying he's young, give him time, he'll come good. He won't.
Yeah but those things, positioning, awareness,equal goals. Those are the things most young strikers struggle with. Why else would they all struggle for goals?
If he'd scored 20 this season we're happy with him. But young strikers most of the time don't do that.
I'd like us to loan him out. A loan not to put him in the shop window but to genuinely develop him.
Can we think of another United team that created so little and had completely abolished counter attacks?
There is certainly another link here.
Hahaha, true.
Yeah agree. We've not helped him either.
The thing is he'll go to Italy/Spain etc and easily end up becoming a 20+ goal striker. Unfortunately, he was thrown in the deep end at United for a young player, both in terms of being made the main striker at age 20/21 with no supporting cast and United overall being super crap during that time, and he never recovered.
Lukaku second goal for Napoli is what i dreamt Hojlund will be doing when he signed for us 
Completely.
He is terrible now but he at least looked promising last season. The mental toll of being the only one had hit him hard and i think having many of the team not passing to him and using him as a decoy all the time has had a huge impact as well.
Would love to be a fly on the wall at Carrington. I bet the real issue would be obvious in the dressing room.
Doubt we're going to see a behind the scenes "Welcome to Old Trafford" any time soon!
He’s not mentally tough enough to be a top striker.
Loan for a season to one of the Italian clubs.
I Wrote this in 2023.
“Now the world is starting to realize what we Danes have known all along. Højlund is in no way at the level required to be a striker in the Premier League, let alone at Manchester United. FC Copenhagen chose not to invest in him because they believed he was simply too poor technically and tactically. He then went to Austria without much success and later ended up on the bench at Atalanta. How anyone can pay £60-70 million for a player and hand him the No. 9 shirt at United is the greatest mystery. I think this could make it into the top 10 of the worst transfer deals of all time.”
How he keeps getting so much playing time after one anonymous performance after another is beyond me. His lack of ability has long since been exposed, and there must surely be another player in the club who is better. It’s outrageous that he has been given so many minutes on the pitch. Hopefully we will have 1 or 2 better alternatives next season.
“Now the world is starting to realize what we Danes have known all along. Højlund is in no way at the level required to be a striker in the Premier League, let alone at Manchester United. FC Copenhagen chose not to invest in him because they believed he was simply too poor technically and tactically. He then went to Austria without much success and later ended up on the bench at Atalanta. How anyone can pay £60-70 million for a player and hand him the No. 9 shirt at United is the greatest mystery. I think this could make it into the top 10 of the worst transfer deals of all time.”
How he keeps getting so much playing time after one anonymous performance after another is beyond me. His lack of ability has long since been exposed, and there must surely be another player in the club who is better. It’s outrageous that he has been given so many minutes on the pitch. Hopefully we will have 1 or 2 better alternatives next season.
Our striker being so poor is a very significant part of why we've created so little. Certainly not the only part, but he actively makes it harder for us to build attacks and his poor movement then means he's rarely in position to get on the end of things when we are looking to get it in the box.
tbh with that awful defending, I wouldn't bet against even Hojlund there.Lukaku second goal for Napoli is what i dreamt Hojlund will be doing when he signed for us
He was extremely highly rated when he came here, I remember the comparison made on this forum. I mean we gave him the nr.9 just like that. Now it's just sad how poor he really is.
Does Napoli / Conte need a striker?
There is no need to sugarcoat this. He is the biggest failure of the season by a wide margin. Got plenty of chances as there was hardly any backup, and failed miserably every single time. Always falling over and never seems to be in the right place. Looking at him play I never have the confidence that he can do something intelligent and suprise. One could argue that he was thrown in the deep end too soon but even then he hasn't shown any signs of improvements and he looks to be a worse player than when he started with us.
I know we are going to persist with him (we are a business now and he won't fetch anything much and we can't afford a good striker anyway) but there is no need to pretend that it is based on merit.
I know we are going to persist with him (we are a business now and he won't fetch anything much and we can't afford a good striker anyway) but there is no need to pretend that it is based on merit.
Hojlund almost scored the header. He still scored more goals than Zirkzee or whichever strikers. He tried hard and is eager to score. And he scored double digits in both seasons here despite playing for a dysfunctional team.
He's a problem but not the biggest problem at the club.
He's a problem but not the biggest problem at the club.
so was evan ferguson 2 years ago
Incidentally, if Brighton had sold Ferguson that summer, he would have gone for more than Højlund did.
He has very poor anticipation. Top strikers have an almost psychic ability when it comes to making the run for a tap in etc.
However, as a team we just don’t create chances with Amorims stupid system. We don’t get the ball into the striker at all.
Unless Amorim changes his setup, goals will be hard to find next season again with any new striker.
It’s too simplistic to make out he’s a flop. Clearly played terribly at many points in the season but impacted heavily by team dysfunction … then there’s the pressure and negativity to deal with when inevitably underperforms under intolerable circumstances. There’s no point in people saying ‘there is a good player in there’ then playing their part in burying that good player. Let’s back him. Get him the right supply and coaching and judge him after that. It’s just career assassination at the minute.
How long do we have to wait for him to come good? It’s always excuses.
The fact is out of all the attacking players this season that did not get shipped out. He ended up performing the worst.
Even in a dysfunctional team you can still evaluate a player. And even last season he was poor for most if it.
Even if he may be good he has failed here over a period of 2 years and we don’t have the luxury of being able to gamble with him any longer. If he does well elsewhere that is fine
It's more consistency of those things and putting it all together at once consistently that plagues young players and prevents their goalscoring being elite, not simply lacking those things. For example, Garnacho will find his way into space but mess up the finish or make a bad decision, but because he often finds a way to get off a shot shows an ability that is there compared to Hojlund who is never able to fashion half a yard to get a quick shot off even when he is so desperate for a shot or goal. You can predict that Garnacho has the potential to be a dangerous forward in the future, but predicting Hojlund will be so based on his actual performance is more hope than expectation. If Hojlund played elsewhere there is no chance you or any United fan would entertain being linked to him.
Rooney didn't score a great deal when young but he showed elite footballing attributes and you could extrapolate that to what he could become, Hojlund demonstrates literally nothing on the football pitch this season and barely much last season either. It is exceptionally rare that Hojlund shows great anticipation, good movement, good natural striker instincts, good touch, pop and turn ability or anything a decent striker should possess. Has he ever done something like Mateta in the cup final for the goal? He tries to play like that but has no capability and people blame the managers changing his style but that is clearly his desired playing style otherwise Zirkzee or whoever else would also try and play that way if the manager demands that of his striker. I see the same thing where Pep is blamed for Grealish style yet somehow Doku isn't forced to play the same way which would make no sense if Pep forced his wide men to play how Grealish does.
Hojlund may develop into a good player and possibly has some raw tools but he doesn't seem to have an innate knack of how to use his body, when and where to move or the ability to anticipate things and some of that could be down to the pressure of being at a big club and knowing he is not up to the level currently which is just consuming him. I'd send him on loan as a combination of development and shop window but I doubt he is close to United level for another 3 years because I would want to see at least 2 years of consistent proven quality from him to deem him worthy of starting for Manchester United.
This
He hasn’t. His debut season was quite promising - and very impressive for me considering the state of the team. The fact that he’s dropped so deep this season should tell us that something besides his abilities is very wrong.
To succeed in his role in a dysfunctional, former top team he would always be hard. For a youngster still learning his trade it’s even harder. People criticize his reading of the game, but how’s he supposed to read what loose cannons like Garnacho does? Or the inconsistent passes from Bruno?
He’s played badly this season, no doubt. But in a well drilled, balanced team he would’ve had a real chance to evolve and would without a doubt have had more goals. People call it excuses. It’s not. It’s explanations. If Amorim thinks it’s time for him to leave I’m fine with that, but I’d hope we would sent him on loan.
You keep ignoring he is one of the reasons for the dysfunction in attack with his lack of ability to hold the ball up and allow us to build up and his lack of intelligent movement
A loan seems like the best option for him next season. His stock can't get lower. A season to go and either build confidence/experience for a return, or to put him in the window and increase his value sounds sensible.
No I’m not, but I don’t think we have played to his strengths, and I don’t think that you can explain the teams crisis with his deficiencies alone - it’s ridiculous
This is actually what I am looking for reading in this Forum. Differing opinions based on observations and not just putting the knife in while being frustrated. There are many reasons to scold Rasmus at the moment, but it is not black and white. He has been awful for big parts of the season. This happens with young players. Look at Ferguson who a lot in here wanted instead of Rasmus. Where is he now? Højlund is taking the biggest part of the sh.. dumped on players in the caf this year, but has he really been worse than Onana, Mainoo, Casemiro or Garnacho if you look at the whole season? I don´t think so. Case came good at the end, but was terrible for more than two thirds of the time. Rasmus had good games as well, but overall he has had a really difficult time, the last third being the worst.
Our biggest problem is that whether Rasmus nor a lot of other players in the squad fit into Amorims plans. That means that we don´t play to our players strengths. Instead we shoehorn them in and scold them for not being able to do things which they are bad at, resulting in us losing a lot of games and ending up where we are now. That to me is unfair criticism. It is also simply bad coaching from Amorim. I am not alone in thinking so. His lack of tactical flexibility resulted in Slot being preferred to Amorim at Liverpool. Rubens ideas was too big a transfer from Klopp-Ball and it didn´t fit the squad.
Shoehorned players this season: Bruno and Eriksen playing in the pivot while being best at 10. Garnacho and Amad as OMs being actual wingers. Zirkzee at 9 being an OM or false 9. Mainoo having no actual position in this set up. I could go on, but you will see the picture.
Then there are some players who just lack traits demanded for the system, affecting the outcome of Amorims tactics in a bad way. An example: We have really good center backs in De Light, Martinez and Harry, but they all have the same problem. They are no race cars. Amorim want our back three to stand high, but we cannot do that due to lack of speed in transitions when we lose the ball. Only Yoro can do that (and Heaven, who is promising but still very green). Result: Our defense is standing too deep when we are attacking.
Another example: We need a pivot with an Ugarte/Casemiro player and a vertical passing machine who wins a lot of balls and creates and connects everything. That has to be a world class player with multiple skills that we simply does not have in our squad. Mainoo, Bruno and Eriksen has some of the traits but all three are lacking in some department, mainly movement and pressing. They are also too slow to get up and connect with our lone striker.
Don´t get me started on the wingbacks. Mazraoui, Amass and Dalot are not getting forward at the right speed. They are good full backs in my eyes. Amad is brilliant going forward, but lacking defensively (which could be covered if the CBs stood higher, but they can´t). Dorgu has the tools for being right at both, but is still pretty raw and inconsistent.
The two 8/10 players: Mount fits the system, but goes missing for most of the season. Garnacho and Amad are shoehorned in. Zirkzee can play here, but is mostly put at 9. Bruno and Eriksen can play the deadly pass or shoot, but both lacks the speed to press like Amorim wants them to. None of the 8/10 players are present in the box, leaving Rasmus alone with two center backs most of the time.
Why has Rasmus played so bad? Well. He can´t do what Amorim wants him to do. He can´t play with his back to the goal and two defenders at his back with 15-20 yards to the nearest United player. Gyokeres can, but the Sporting players are making it much easier than we are. They get a lot closer to the striker, giving him more and simpler option for playing the ball back and turn. Our players lack of speed leaves our striker (no matter who it is') with a harder pass to make, or holding the ball for a second too long, waiting for his fellow players to arrive. He also won´t get a lot of chances being the sole United player in the box. Rasmus´strengths are running into tunnels and finishing, but we do not use him like that. Should he go? Right now it is a yes for me, but it depends... With the right players , he might work out just fine, but are we really getting all the players that we need in the summer? I don´t think so. The simple option: Get a manager, who can get the best out of whatever players are around for the next season. Amorim has proven, that this is not his strength.
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So surely this is his last game here? At best he is absolutely not suited to Premier League football and should go to a slower, less physical league.
People like to say Weghorst was bad, but at least he could hold the ball up, be imposing and link up play to offset his lack of goals.
People like to say Weghorst was bad, but at least he could hold the ball up, be imposing and link up play to offset his lack of goals.
I don't know, Amorim seems to like him. He apparently has a previous of consistently playing a striker no one rates at Sporting.
Starting him again feels like a sackable offense tbh
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