Where are we going to get enough goals from?

[noodlehair]

Presuming Lukaku goes (and even if he doesn't he seems to have basically retired from actaully participating in football matches), and we don't sign anyone else, where are we going to get enough goals from this season?

I like the direction Ole seems to be going in, if he can actually get it to work in practice, but this is one of a few things that's troubling me. In order to be looking at top four and a half decent chance in the cup competitions, we need to be looking at scoring 100+ goals during the season. We got 85 last year. How many do you think we can realisitically expect with this set of players? We've added no significant goalscorers and basically lost our main striker.

Being really optimistic I can get to this:

Rashford - 20
Martial - 20
Pogba - 15
Sanchez, Mata, Lingard, Greenwood, James, Gomez, etc. betwen them - 40ish
The rest - 15?

That's around 110, but with the problem being it requires pretty much every player to have a good season goal scoring wise, which in reality is really quite unlikely. The likes of Sanchez could just as easily get 0 goals as 10-15. There's no one who's going to get near 30 unless Rashford or Martial have a pretty big breakout season, which again is relying on the unlikely.

I'm not talking about goals needed to win a league, but goals needed to get back in the top four. Maybe we can keep up the style of play we saw for the first few months under Ole, but even so we were often winning games by small margins.

Hopefully something surprising happens and one or two really step up.

Goals.

 

[AshRK]

I would be ecstatic if either of martial or tashford step up and score 20+ goals but so far there is nothing to suggest they will. The problem is not just that, we lack creative players. Take pogba out we look toothless. Unless gomes or greenwood really become the shining stars we are going to struggle big time.

 

[Eddy_JukeZ]

Maybe own goal steps up again like in 2009-2010.

 

[The Boy]

Worth remembering that in the Premiership Chelsea scored two goals less than you last season and Tottenham only scored two more than you. The big difference was goals against where you let in 15 goals more than both of them. You’ve gone a long way to fixing your defence, that’s worth quite a few points straight away.

Lukaku scored 12 last season, it’s not unrealistic to see 12 Plus goals from Greenwood and Gomes. Also both Rashford and Martial only scored 10 each, they should both improve on that, just by getting the chance to play as an out and out striker more often. Also Lingard only got 4 whereas the season before he got 8 so I would expect improvement there as well.

You’ll be playing a far more attacking brand of football this season so you should get more chances than under Mou, and the first half of your season won’t be spent in utter chaos as the board and the manage fight publicly! Even if Lukaku goes and Sanchez never remembers how to play football, there are definitely goals in this team and third place is a very realistic target.

 

[Devil may care]

We won't score enough goals, I have very little faith in Rashford and even less in Martial at this point, their lack of consistency given their amount of game time is poor, and that cluster you have with 40 will be lucky to conjur up 20 between them, plus if Pogba is going to play a deeper role which appears to be the case, he'll get less.

We've bought a defense for Jose's football but have a manager who needs attackers that can implement his style and left him with 2 slow has-beens, 2 serial underperformers, 2 kids with zero experience and whatever the feck you want to class Lingard as.

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

Presuming Lukaku goes (and even if he doesn't he seems to have basically retired from actaully participating in football matches), and we don't sign anyone else, where are we going to get enough goals from this season?

I like the direction Ole seems to be going in, if he can actually get it to work in practice, but this is one of a few things that's troubling me. In order to be looking at top four and a half decent chance in the cup competitions, we need to be looking at scoring 100+ goals during the season. We got 85 last year. How many do you think we can realisitically expect with this set of players? We've added no significant goalscorers and basically lost our main striker.

Being really optimistic I can get to this:

Rashford - 20
Martial - 20
Pogba - 15
Sanchez, Mata, Lingard, Greenwood, James, Gomez, etc. betwen them - 40ish
The rest - 15?

That's around 110, but with the problem being it requires pretty much every player to have a good season goal scoring wise, which in reality is really quite unlikely. The likes of Sanchez could just as easily get 0 goals as 10-15. There's no one who's going to get near 30 unless Rashford or Martial have a pretty big breakout season, which again is relying on the unlikely.

I'm not talking about goals needed to win a league, but goals needed to get back in the top four. Maybe we can keep up the style of play we saw for the first few months under Ole, but even so we were often winning games by small margins.

Hopefully something surprising happens and one or two really step up.

Goals.

Su'agoals, surely @noodlehair

 

[bosnian_red]

I think we're fine as is for top 4, the biggest problem before was our defence and that's been massively improved with Maguire and Wan Bissaka. Arsenal's biggest problem previously was their defence and they ignored it, Chelsea lost Hazard and replaced Sarri with Lampard, so we are definite favourites for 4th IMO. Or at least it's very close between us and Arsenal for that spot. Also between the 2 clubs for the Europa League IMO.

If you look at last season, the main difference between the 4 top 4 challengers was the defence. They all had pretty similar attacking stats, both real goals and underlying stats like xG, but the difference was defence. Spurs were strong defensively, Chelsea was solid at the back for a good part of the season, but United and Arsenal had mid table level defences. That's fixed for us now, while I don't think we're any weaker in the attack.

In terms of goals, going to list them all out and take an average of what they've scored over the last 2 seasons. Some obvious spots where we'll expect big boosts, but in the cases of Rashford and Martial, definitely think we'll see it.

1. Matteo Darmian - 0
2. Ashley Young - 2
3. Aaron Wan Bissaka - 0 (one season)
4. Luke Shaw - 0.5
5. Diogo Dalot - 0
6. Victor Lindelof - 0.5
7. Harry Maguire - 2.5
8. Eric Bailly - 0.5
9. Chris Smalling - 1
10. Phil Jones - 0
11. Marcos Rojo - 0
12. Axel Tuanzebe - 0 (one season)
13. Nemanja Matic - 1.5
14. Scott McTominay - 1
15. Andreas Pereira - 1
16. Fred - 2.5
17. Paul Pogba - 11
18. Juan Mata - 4.5
19. Jesse Lingard - 9
20. Angel Gomes - youth
21. Alexis Sanchez - 6.5
22. Tahith Chong - youth
23. Daniel James - 5 (one season)
24. Anthony Martial - 11.5
25. Marcus Rashford - 13
26. Mason Greenwood - youth
    
27. Romelu Lukaku - 21
28. Own Goal - 2

Average total over 2 seasons of current squad: 96.5 (not counting anything Greenwood, Chong or Gomes scored as they were in the reserves).

Of that group, we can take out Lukaku's goals and Sanchez's total will depend on if he actualls plays. Martial and Rashford should both be looking at at least 5 goals each more (safe total of 35 between them), while between Chong/Greenwood/Gomes we can definitely eat up the remaining goals Lukaku offered (combined with what Sanchez will slack off with). Don't think it's unreasonable in the slightest really to expect the rest to pretty much provide what they've done over the past 2 seasons.

So that's my very safe prediction, asking Martial and Rashford to score 5 goals more each, while Greenwood, Chong and Gomes manage 10-15 goals between them to replace Lukaku's goals and Sanchez's goals. Everyone else we have literally just do what they did on average over the last 2 seasons. Would make it around 95 goals.

 

[Hawks2008]

We're relying on martial and Rashford basically. They've been regular first teamers for 4 years now so there's no more excuses for them not to step up

 

[Irwin99]

It seems like it's been a recurrent problem in the post SAF era to get enough goals in the league not just in all comps. The goals will be spread out like last season but it'd massively help us to have a player who is a natural goalscorer when trying to break teams down. Somebody whose main purpose is to get those goals. If we don't get anyone else we just have to hope Rashford/Martial/Greenwood step up big time or Sanchez suddenly starts performing (not likely)

 

[Red Dreams]

You win or lose a football match in midfield.

Newsflash.
It is gutted.

 

[noodlehair]

I would be ecstatic if either of martial or tashford step up and score 20+ goals but so far there is nothing to suggest they will. The problem is not just that, we lack creative players. Take pogba out we look toothless. Unless gomes or greenwood really become the shining stars we are going to struggle big time.

Relying on teenagers is not realistic though. Even in the unlikely event you have future world beaters in your ranks they're not going to be getting you masses of goals at 18 years old.

You win or lose a football match in midfield.

Newsflash.
It is gutted.

Liverpool got nearly 100 points last season and finished 2nd. Their midfield has players like Henderson and Milner in it. Players who wouldn't improve us at all. Midfield is an issue but a separate one.

 

[::sonny::]

Rashford - 13
Martial - 12
Pogba - 11
Sanchez, Mata, Lingard, Greenwood, James - 20

 

[iluvoursolskjær]

Sanchez is going to smash it

 

[Red Dreams]

Liverpool got nearly 100 points last season and finished 2nd. Their midfield has players like Henderson and Milner in it. Players who wouldn't improve us at all. Midfield is an issue but a separate one.

Henderson and Milner will get in over McT and Matic with all due respect. You forgot to mention Fabinho and Wijnaldum.
Unless we expect our forwards to carry the ball from Defence to score.

Midfield is the engine of the team.

We will be lucky to again finish 6th.

EDIT:

I realise we all rate McT.
Come on. We lack depth.
I don't want to compare us to Liverpool. It misses the point.

You need to have at least 5 players who are interchangeable in midfield.

We have Garner sure.

 

[Red Dreams]

If we get (prays) Bruno and a DM...not going to now.

We have a good chance for Top 4.

I think we are ok in Defence.

Forwards. With Lukaku gone (hopefully), we will still be alright.

But midfield is the key.

 

[marktan]

Henderson and Milner will get in over McT and Matic with all due respect. You forgot to mention Fabinho and Wijnaldum.
Unless we expect our forwards to carry the ball from Defence to score.

Midfield is the engine of the team.

We will be lucky to again finish 6th.

EDIT:

I realise we all rate McT.
Come on. We lack depth.
I don't want to compare us to Liverpool. It misses the point.

You need to have at least 5 players who are interchangeable in midfield.

We have Garner sure.

Some would say defence is the most important, others would say attack.

Fact is you stick Liverpool's midfield in our team it doesn't really improve our team much. It's Liverpool's front three that allow their midfield to be more grunty, which served them well until their defence let them down, which they then rectified with Van Djik and Allison.

Reality is each third of the pitch is important. Our defence has improved a lot (hopefully). Our midfield as you say is really lacking in numbers. But the attack is our biggest weakness still for the fact there's not a single world class player ala Sterling, Mane, Salah etc in it.

 

[Red Dreams]

Some would say defence is the most important, others would say attack.

Fact is you stick Liverpool's midfield in our team it doesn't really improve our team much. It's Liverpool's front three that allow their midfield to be more grunty, which served them well until their defence let them down, which they then rectified with Van Djik and Allison.

Reality is each third of the pitch is important. Our defence has improved a lot (hopefully). Our midfield as you say is really lacking in numbers. But the attack is our biggest weakness still for the fact there's not a single world class player ala Sterling, Mane, Salah etc in it.

You build your team around the midfield.

I remember an opposition player saying this and stuck with me forever.

"When asked how do you get past their defence.?" he replied. We need to get past their midfield first.

We had Keane and Scholes then.

Last season under Mourinho we had teams going through our midfield like it was butter. Ole and Phelan got the midfield straightened.

This is what makes me angry. The board knew. Ander was gone. Pogba wanted out. Matic was ageing. Fred and Andreas are simply not good enough.

We had the whole summer.
Look where we are.

 

[bond19821982]

https://www.redcafe.net/threads/where-do-we-find-more-goals.449135/

 

[Kush]

Pray for a miracle that someone in our squad has a breakthrough season and goes on a tear, otherwise there's not much precedent.

What I am completely puzzled by is the situation regarding Lukaku, the club has known the entire summer that Lukaku wants to leave. Dybala swap deal only came up in last 7 days, my question is prior to Dybala coming up who were we planning to replace Lukaku with?

 

[Red Dreams]

With all the extra CBs around, perhaps Ole can push Jones and Axel into a DM role.

 

[Revaulx]

We won't score enough goals, I have very little faith in Rashford and even less in Martial at this point, their lack of consistency given their amount of game time is poor, and that cluster you have with 40 will be lucky to conjur up 20 between them, plus if Pogba is going to play a deeper role which appears to be the case, he'll get less.

We've bought a defense for Jose's football but have a manager who needs attackers that can implement his style and left him with 2 slow has-beens, 2 serial underperformers, 2 kids with zero experience and whatever the feck you want to class Lingard as.

Glad it’s not just me that thinks this. AWB might be able to adapt, but I really can’t see Maguire playing the sort of high line that Oleball really needs.

I’ve got more confidence in Rashford than you seem to, and describing him as a “serial underperformer” is very harsh. That aside I think your doubts are spot on.

 

[Ibi Dreams]

Pray for a miracle that someone in our squad has a breakthrough season and goes on a tear, otherwise there's not much precedent.

What I am completely puzzled by is the situation regarding Lukaku, the club has known the entire summer that Lukaku wants to leave. Dybala swap deal only came up in last 7 days, my question is prior to Dybala coming up who were we planning to replace Lukaku with?

Ben Yedder? I think Ole has always wanted Rashford up front over Lukaku anyway, so Lukaku's replacement wouldn't have been a like for like "big name" player who would expect to start every game

 

[Bestietom]

Presuming Lukaku goes (and even if he doesn't he seems to have basically retired from actaully participating in football matches), and we don't sign anyone else, where are we going to get enough goals from this season?

I like the direction Ole seems to be going in, if he can actually get it to work in practice, but this is one of a few things that's troubling me. In order to be looking at top four and a half decent chance in the cup competitions, we need to be looking at scoring 100+ goals during the season. We got 85 last year. How many do you think we can realisitically expect with this set of players? We've added no significant goalscorers and basically lost our main striker.

Being really optimistic I can get to this:

Rashford - 20
Martial - 20
Pogba - 15
Sanchez, Mata, Lingard, Greenwood, James, Gomez, etc. betwen them - 40ish
The rest - 15?

That's around 110, but with the problem being it requires pretty much every player to have a good season goal scoring wise, which in reality is really quite unlikely. The likes of Sanchez could just as easily get 0 goals as 10-15. There's no one who's going to get near 30 unless Rashford or Martial have a pretty big breakout season, which again is relying on the unlikely.

I'm not talking about goals needed to win a league, but goals needed to get back in the top four. Maybe we can keep up the style of play we saw for the first few months under Ole, but even so we were often winning games by small margins.

Hopefully something surprising happens and one or two really step up.

Goals.

Sort the midfield out and we get the service required.

 

[ayushreddevil9]

From nowhere. I don't trust Rashford and Martial. They can go on a season long goal drought. We need some experience for attack.

 

[Volumiza]

Looking at it objectively our goals will come from Martial, Rashford, Lingard, James, Pogba and the rest of the team ... my worry is that there just won’t be many of them.

Not one of those players have shown the consistency needed to smash 20 a season in the league.

 

[The Boy]

We will be lucky to again finish 6th.

We need some experience for attack.

Just two random worries from this thread.

• Spurs have Kane and Son, they scored 2 more goals than you last season
• Chelsea scored 2 less
• You let in too many goals last season
• You've fixed your defence
• You're playing a more attacking style this season
• You're payers are happier, you can expect a bit more from all of them

You will finish higher than you did last season, 3rd or 4th would be be my bet, you'll play more attractive football. People have been calling for a rebuild and for progression, it looks like you're getting both, you have alot more to be hopeful about!

 

[noodlehair]

Henderson and Milner will get in over McT and Matic with all due respect. You forgot to mention Fabinho and Wijnaldum.
Unless we expect our forwards to carry the ball from Defence to score.

Midfield is the engine of the team.

We will be lucky to again finish 6th.

EDIT:

I realise we all rate McT.
Come on. We lack depth.
I don't want to compare us to Liverpool. It misses the point.

You need to have at least 5 players who are interchangeable in midfield.

We have Garner sure.

Garner isn't ready and again midfield is a separate issue. We will be capable of getting the ball up the pitch against most teams. We're not trying to play like City and we're not looking at challenging for a title this season.

 

[noodlehair]

Sort the midfield out and we get the service required.

Again missing the point. You could gave Scholes and Keane in midfield and you'll still struggle to score enough goals unless you have enough goalscorers. Martial and Rashford for example would possibly get a few more goals at City, but they wouldn't suddenly be banging in 30 a year each. And it's more likely they just wouldn't play very much. No one else in our attacking set up would even be sitting on the bench.

 

[buckooo1978]

our goals for column needed improved.... that is for sure

Will Rashford/Martial be able to develop the kind of consistency to get 15 each? I have my doubts

the key improvement we will make is in defence. With De Gea back on form, AWB and Maguire I'd expect us to concede 15 less goals - just a shame we didnt bring in a CDM too

 

[charlenefan]

'Where will the goals come from?'

It's summer 2006 all over again

 

[VeevaVee]

We've bought a defense for Jose's football but have a manager who needs attackers that can implement his style and left him with 2 slow has-beens, 2 serial underperformers, 2 kids with zero experience and whatever the feck you want to class Lingard as.

Been saying this all summer with everyone desperate for a CB, which was needed but won't make us score goals, which is where we really struggle. Quick accurate passing, runs, final third stuff - not improved on enough at the moment.

 

[settembrini]

I think Rashford will score a lot of goals next season.

Also if Greenwood gets decent playing time then he could really boost us here.

 

[K13]

With all the extra CBs around, perhaps Ole can push Jones and Axel into a DM role.

I was wondering what was going to happen with so many CBs but that is an interesting thought. Jones played there a few times under Sir Alex who I seem to remember experimented with Ronny Johnsen and Ferdinand there as well.

 

[Andersons Dietician]

To be honest I think if we create the chances which has been a problem for a while now then Martial and Rashford will score goals. I expect 1 of them to get around the 20 goal mark but I’m just a little concerned that without Pogba our midfield is lacking anyone with creativity.

 

[Volumiza]

To be honest I think if we create the chances which has been a problem for a while now then Martial and Rashford will score goals.

This is a good point, I have said that Rashford and Martial will struggle to get us 20+ goals in the league but with better service this would be made more possible.

 

[Web of Bissaka]

From nowhere. I don't trust Rashford and Martial. They can go on a season long goal drought. We need some experience for attack.

Difficult to count on when they don't seem bother to perform, for whatever reasons.

Rom and San.

 

[K13]

I think we will be fine for goals - we have enough firepower in Pogba, Martial and Rashford. Mata, Lingard, Maguire and Sanchez will all chip in as all have got goal scoring ability. McTominay & Matic both have a lovely strike and hopefully that will yield a few as well. Greenwood & James are so raw at this level that it would be unfair to burden them with any expectations. Our other CBS Smalling and Jones are also capable of scoring.

I think being more water tight/conceding less could be the key and the additions to the squad should help improve that.

 

[lysglimt]

First of all - we scored 65 League goals last season - it's not like we need to score 80 goals to improve this season. Realistically we should not concede anywhere near 54 goals again - not with AWB and Maguire in the side. So chances are - if we score 65 goals again we should improve quite a bit from last season.

We don't have the players to match Liverpool and City - but a realistic goal should be Close to 2 goals pr game .. so 70+ goals

Our strikers should score at least 30+ goals if they take the penalties (Rashford, Martial, Greenwood and i ll consider Sanchez here) - slightly less if Pogba once again takes the penalties.

Lingard will score 5-6 goals - Pogba will score 5-6 goals (without penalties), Fred, Andreas, Mata and the youngsters will add a total of 10 goals. And McTominay - who easily could be a high-scoring midfielder - but let's count low and say 4 goals. So let's say the midfielders score about 25 goals.

So without goals from defenders we should be at 55-60 goals

Maguire will get some, Smalling will probably get some and who knows maybe AWB and Shaw will get a goal each

I won't be happy with 65 goals - but it will probably be enough for us to get a higher position than last season

 

[Web of Bissaka]

We'll be heavily relying on Pogba to step up again, and the usually always try-to-step-up Rashford.

While Ole shall..

• trust on Martial to perform for more months than his usual,
• gamble Greenwood to chip in goals,
• rely always on Lingard to well... do lots of scoring/assisting which he usually cannot do,
• depends on Mata always as a regular,
• pray Sanchez shall finally break the curse by giving him more and more chances.

Reasonable expectations:
Martial to contribute consistently for uhh 3 months then sporadically.
Lingard will give around 5 goals.
Greenwood if given good chances, 10 goals isn't much to ask.
McTom will likely stepping up with more goals.
Maguire (he's confirm ryte?) will also chip in goals.
Smalling may then up his game, because of the CB competitions.
Shaw tend to like a shot or two per games, 3 goals?
Fred is a natural at being a threat at the hole, so few goals here.


It's a worrying situation no doubt.
Let's sit back and see how this play out.

 

[charlenefan]

@lysglimt spot on

I really dont understand the whole we wont make top 4, we wont do this, we wont do that. We narrowly missed out on top 4 last season and we have improved. Conversely one of the teams that did make top 4 have lost the player that got them there single handily.

If we finished miles off last season then I'd agree we've not done enough but alas there wasn't much in it between us, Chelsea and Arsenal. There also wasn't a lot between us and Spurs either but I concede they're probably still nailed on for a top 4 finish. Of the 4 teams below City and Liverpool I'm quite confident in saying we're the team that's improved their XI the most