The same issues were present. The main difference is that posters exercised more patience under the caf ‘young player, new country, struggling team, been injured’ rule. That has gone this season.
Aside from his purple patch last season, he was poor. There was some brightness in his early games as you can expect from natural enthusiasm and will to do well from a mew player. But it should not be forgotten that even AFTER his flurry of goals - he still managed to end the season on the bench, having lost a competition with himself to be our centre forward, with Bruno/Mount being preferred as a partnership. To his credit, he did get a couple off the bench during this period too, which meant that ALL of his goals didn’t come in 6 games.
Rasmus' woes certainly did not begin with this campaign, that much is for sure. Reading through last season's performance thread, things clearly and steadily decline and it concludes with his woeful showing at the Euros, which is documented by the posters in there in real time and offsets any narrative to the contrary.
What has happened this term, however, is that what was hoped to be a base level from which he would show marked improvement went completely in the other direction - I don't think there's any exaggeration in saying he is worse at literally everything this season than he was last. It's been an absolute horror show and that's a big problem when the base level was already starting to slide within the season in which it was being established.
He looked like a player with a potential upside that, yes, could be based around his purple patch - at least it was there and it was something to think that in the future might be the regular version of him as the things he struggled with were brought up to - or even beyond - par, but when that purple can be so clearly separated from the rest of the season and has had no inkling it was repeatable for him, it starts to look like a clear outlier rather that something that can be geared toward. Many players have had a month(s) of form in the PL that they didn't get close to again and that's obviously where his age and potential upswing becomes a factor. Problem there is, you don't see such concerted, terrible performance from most players who go on to be something - they will always have flashes and glimpses of the player they could become, not this entire slump that more suggests just a lower level of player.
His confidence is clearly shot to pieces and it can be fairly thrown into the mix of his horror season, but his problem is that the questions about his innate and latent talent make for very fair concern of whether he's worth the time and effort to see what may come out the other side. Incidentally, he isn't the only one who has plummeted from one season to another as both Kobbie and Garnacho are in a relative slump, but it's pretty clear with the other two that investing time and effort in them has the potential reward of a very strong club asset in the long run - in two to three years time, it will be interesting to revisit this in relation to how their careers are playing out and where they are then relative to the doldrums of the now. Despite both being younger than Hojlund, they have more innate understanding of where to go and what to do on a pitch before we even mention technical acumen and that's a huge concern for the Dane, but I maintain he wasn't raised a #9 so is learning the role on the job.
Anyway, my personal feeling is that we didn't do right by him and I don't think he's had the chance to be coached hands on and thoroughly due to the calendar we've had and the incompetence of having only he as a #9 during that time - that means you mostly go back out as is and training is working on recovery and refinement of what's already there... which is disastrous for someone like Hojlund. Whatever he's going to go on to be, it needs developmental time we can't provide.
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