I use league football as the standard, otherwise we would be lauding David Healy for his international goals. Cup comps and internationals are fine but footballers bread and butter is always the league campaign, always has been and always will be. Unless you want to try and defend subpar footballers
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In the latest edition of the United Hour Podcast, we interview Duncan Drasdo of MUST - covering ticket prices, new stadium, INEOS and what fans should be demanding from our club.
Also, due to technical issues we couldn't put a notice up for the previous episode which was about the game against Bournemouth and other stuff. If you'd like to listen to it, click here.
In the case of Højlund there is really not a lot of reason to defend anything this season. Subpar was between the last two summer breaks. He has found his form again, and that seems to piss off some of the people in here who wrote him off. Yeah the league is the bread and butter, but seriously. You don´t rate CL and the World Cup? Why does every player want to play those two competitions then? Our failure to get in is one of our biggest problems. We can´t get the absolute top players to sign here as long as we are not playing CL. Strange to cut everything out except the league when you rate players. Unless it suits your agenda.
If he starts scoring in the serie a more which he eventually will, then Serie A will also be labelled a Weak League.
That defending 
How the mighty have fallen from the Nesta and Maldini days. Goalkeeper really should not be beat from there either.
How the mighty have fallen from the Nesta and Maldini days. Goalkeeper really should not be beat from there either.Goal again today
Glad for him. He's worked hard for it.
Brace for him today bagging goals for Napoli regularly fair play to him
One of them assisted by McT.
Glad for him, he will get better with age and experience.
Only Lautaro Martinez and Pulisic have scored more goals than Højlund in the league.
I forgot he's still just 22.
It still boggles my mind that we brought a 20 year old with half a year experience in top flight football to lead the line for Man Utd, all by himself with no backups; and then we continued that for another year with barely any additional support.
It still boggles my mind that we brought a 20 year old with half a year experience in top flight football to lead the line for Man Utd, all by himself with no backups; and then we continued that for another year with barely any additional support.
He has 6 goals in 12 games to be fair. Nothing groundbreaking.
Starts?
A goal every other game is pretty much doing the job as a striker unless you are a freak like Haaland. If he keeps that up all season I am sure Napoli will be happy with the investment and we will be happy with the €40M. Sometimes everything works out for the best for everyone.
Yeah madness.
He'll be 23 at the start of next season and that's the kind of age we should have been bringing him in at. Even then it's still young.
And when out of form they just kept shoving him out there, the club did little to protect him as a young player
Rasmus Højlund 2025/26 so far:
9 goals in 1548 minutes for Napoli = 172 minutes/goal
12 scorer in 1548 minutes for Napoli = 129 minutes/scorer
5 goals in 273 minutes for Denmark = 54,5 minutes/goal
6 scorer in 273 minutes for Denmarkm = 45,5 minutes/scorer
Denmark and Napoli combined this season:
14 goals in 1821 minutes = 130 minutes/goal
18 scorer in 1821 minutes = 101 minutes/scorer
...but wait a minute. International goals doesn´t count!
...and the italian league is weaker than my grannys granny!
...and the Champions League is......not the Premier League.....or something.
...and some of the goals were scored in the same game. They have purple patch written all over them. They only count half as much.
9 goals in 1548 minutes for Napoli = 172 minutes/goal
12 scorer in 1548 minutes for Napoli = 129 minutes/scorer
5 goals in 273 minutes for Denmark = 54,5 minutes/goal
6 scorer in 273 minutes for Denmarkm = 45,5 minutes/scorer
Denmark and Napoli combined this season:
14 goals in 1821 minutes = 130 minutes/goal
18 scorer in 1821 minutes = 101 minutes/scorer
...but wait a minute. International goals doesn´t count!
...and the italian league is weaker than my grannys granny!
...and the Champions League is......not the Premier League.....or something.
...and some of the goals were scored in the same game. They have purple patch written all over them. They only count half as much.
I like him but fecking Jamie Vardy just won POTM. It's a weak league.
According to UEFA it is the second best league in the world over the last five years but yes. The Premier League is number one in that ranking. Weak is different though.
I watch a ton of Serie A games due to Paramount+ and there not being much else on in Alabama on a Sunday afternoon. If it is the second best league in Europe then the gulf from the PL to everyone else is huge, it is fairly technical but painfully slow and just has zero intensity. Rasmus is doing a decent job and has clearly been working on some things but he would still be miles out of his depth if he was here.
Much like everyone else we bring up front then. It is not about the player. It is about the system. Change the system and the striker will begin to score. If fed properly, that goes for Sesko as well. The Serie A is a very tactical league with a lot of focus on defense. No player has scored more than 8 goals in the league so far, so it is not an easy league to score in. That said, the PL is better.
C’mon, that award doesn’t prove anything about league quality. The Serie A Player of the Month is decided by online fan voting, not by some absolute measure of football level. It’s basically a poll.
So using the fact that Vardy won it to say “Serie A is a low-level league” is pointless — it just means people clicked on a name. Fans vote for jokes, nostalgia, popularity, or just to mess around all the time.
Moreover, Vardy scored 9 goals with Leicester in the Premier League last year. This year, he has 4 goals at the halfway point of the Serie A season, which puts him more or less on the same pace. So if Vardy scores 9 in the Premier League, no one questions the level of the competition — but if he scores 4 in Italy, it suddenly becomes proof that the league is weak?
Football quality isn’t decided by an online survey or by the goal of ONE player, and the Premier League isn’t the only league that matters. Thinking otherwise is just ignorance, not analysis.
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Verdy is past it. He's gotten worse since last year and still manages to score in Serie A.
Hojlund couldn't do anything in the Premier League because he's just not that good. He might develop a little bit in a weaker league (probably should have stayed in Serie A for a couple of years in the firstplace) but for now he's incredibly raw at best.
Serie A is a weaker league, it’s not even really a debate or a surprise given the top sides recruit Premier League cast offs. There’s a huge gulf in resources that makes it impossible for Serie A to compete.
It doesn’t mean it’s a bad league or a terrible standard but it’s not really a surprise that players who struggle in the Premier League look better in a weaker league. It would be a surprise if players like Hojlund and Mctominay went there and looked worse, I just find the whining whenever one of them scores all a bit pointless.
Vardy is past his peak, sure — but he was already past it last season too, and still scored 9 in the Premier League. This year he’s on a very similar scoring pace in Serie A. If age-decline Vardy scoring in England isn’t used as evidence that the PL is weak, it’s inconsistent to suddenly use the same player’s goals in Italy as proof that Serie A is.
As for Højlund, struggling in the Premier League doesn’t automatically mean he’s “not that good.” He’s young, raw, and was thrown into a dysfunctional attacking setup with massive expectations. Development isn’t linear, and context matters. Serie A helping a young striker refine his game doesn’t make it a “bad league” — it makes it a different tactical environment, one that has historically developed elite forwards.
So either you judge players consistently across leagues, or you admit the criticism is selective.
Doing well, pleased for him. I hope they trigger the option
You are funny, you went very quiet when he barely scored for a couple of months and now you are back. He's not proving anyone wrong and it's still very clear he isn't anywhere near PL standard. Dude is a flake.
Unlike many other United players on loan, I'm truly happy for him.
Well. The QMaster has settled the argument with a one liner then. It is obviously clear that Højlund is still nowhere near PL standard. No argumentation needed.
I just think this is a case of a player with renewed confidence also playing in a weaker league.
He was decent in his first season here. His second was awful but we were largely awful all round. There’s a good player there but we don’t ever need to lament his leaving. We need players that will still perform when others around them aren’t.
He was decent in his first season here. His second was awful but we were largely awful all round. There’s a good player there but we don’t ever need to lament his leaving. We need players that will still perform when others around them aren’t.
Ok, but what I contest is the idea that the Premier League should be the sole benchmark for judging a player’s quality — as if “real football” only exists in England, while Italy, Spain, and the rest are just “farmers leagues.”
That simply isn’t true. Different leagues pose different challenges — tactical, physical, and mental — and succeeding in Serie A or La Liga still means performing at a very high level. Reducing player evaluation to “could he do it in the Premier League?” is a narrow, oversimplified way of looking at football.
But it’s the benchmark for Utd, that’s what we care about. If we sell players to a weaker and much less physical league and they look better I don’t think that really matters it’s just showing they were not right for us.
Of course there are different challenges but we should expect Mctominay and Hojlund to look better in Serie A and Antony in La Liga in the same way we should expect Garnacho to look like the same player at Chelsea.
The farmers league stuff is silly but so is all the moaning whenever someone we’ve sold scores a goal. Mctominay, Hojlund, Sancho and Garnacho have 9 league goals between them this season. We don’t need all the dramatics every time one of them has a decent game or scores a goal.
Pleased to see him bag a couple more goals. Hope he has a top season there and makes the switch permanently, which will be good for all parties.
So you think he's a capable striker of leading a top 4 PL team? Is that your take?
You have gone from claiming that he is nowhere near PL standard to that question in the blink of an eye. Leading striker in a top 4 team and nowhere near PL standard are two pair of shoes. I think that he is the best striker in the Serie A right now, and I think that he has been a lot better than Sesko (whom I actually rate highly as a player) up until now.
Your claims are way out there. Rasmus was our top scorer in his first ever PL season and undeniably had an incredibly bad second half of last season. He has scored 14 goals for club and country this season. That is the most of any player owned by United so far. Bruno is second at 10 goals. Yes. It is not the PL league, but if that is your sole argument, there can be no discussion. That means if you are not playing in the PL, you are shit. Kane, Mbappe, Lewandowski etc. Their goals aren´t worth nothing because some of them are scored against Cadiz, Augsburg or Leganes. That is so weird.
Could Rasmus lead a top 4 team in the PL right now? Well we are not a top 4 team right now, are we? But yes. I think he could. He is clearly behind Erling Haaland, who is a monster. I would also see him behind Ekitike so far, but thats it. He has been on par or better than any striker at Villa (Rogers and Semenyo are wingers) or Arsenal so far this season. Has Watkins, Gyokeres & Co. really been better? I don´t think so. Should he be the sole option in a PL top 4 team. Never ever, but that goes for any striker and any club aiming for the PL top four. It was scandalous that we did not have a proper alternative to Rasmus in the two seasons he was here. That is unworthy for a club of our size. It also meant throwing an out of form young player under the bus for months exposing his weaknesses and robbing every little bit of confidence last season.
Would he function here now? Not like he does in Napoli. The Amorim system is still the Amorim system, where strikers are not fed but scraps. He is more clinical than Sesko though, so he would probably have got a few more than the slovenian, who is struggling at the moment. I want Amorim out ASAP.
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Completely agree. And players are human beings that perform differently under different circumstances and environments.
Agreed.
Our issue has never been about which league the player has come from but rather it's been about if the player is suited to playing-in and elevating a system of play which enables you to sacrifice defensive stability for goals in a approach which is centred on implementing a high line and thus having the capability to overload the opponent's half with a high volume of players which in-turn also creates conditions to collectively press high as a team. This is what they can't get right and the current DoF, Wilcox seems completely oblivious to the present day requirements of tacking the top teams who have implemented such systems.
Under Solksjaer in his first season they were said to be looking to sign prem proven players and we spent a big chunk of money on Maguire and Wan Bissaka. And eventhough they were both prem proven players, both players were not proven as far as elevating a system of play which required the CB to both play through a press and aslo manage space in a higher line. Maguire quite simply didn't have the attributes to elevate such a game style within his position and Wan Bissaka was just not good enough in-possession for such a proactive attacking idea. And to compound things further, Solskjaer pairs Maguire with Lindelof and hence the team is now complete as far as playing a reactive brand of football.
If we look at the Napoli team and how they've constructed that team. You can see that even with a lack of finances they've created a team that is somewhat balanced. From the back and into midfield they have the ability to build play with a player like Lobotka who isn't the player he once was but he still has the ability to be a ball retention and press resistance master and then you have De Bruyne and Anguissa who further add a element of craft, guile and space managing capabilities. Anguissa then further adds the ability to clean up aerially and together they form a team that has the capability to play in different ways and hence it allows Mctominay who is somewhat more limited to concentrate on what he's good at in the final third. And that wasn't the case at United, where he was being asked to perform roles in midfield where his own limitations along with the limitations of the players surrounding him in defence and midfield brought the whole collective level of the team down.
And when you have massive deficiencies in the first two lines where you are lacking as far as building play from the back and into midfield and then to compound things further your midfield is also lacking as far as managing space in a higher line, then you're pretty much going to struggle and hence in a lot of games isolate your forwards due to having to play a more direct game. Hojlund is scoring goals because he's surrounded by a better team that is more balanced from the back, into midfield and upfront. And now we're seeing Sesko suffer the same because the problems in the build up that have plagued us for years have not been addressed and the only reason I believe Wilcox is getting away with his incompetence is due to many believing that our problems stemmed from replacing the whole front line when in reality the foundation of any attacking team who looks to play the game in the opponent's half have to build their attacking approach from the back and into midfield by attempting to render the opponents press ineffective which then creates the conditions for a higher line and a high volume of players to support the front line and hence dictate the game.
I admire your tenacity with Qmaster. I put him on ignore a long time ago, it’s like debating with a barn door
Wrong thread