Man Utd has had problems with strikers for the past 10 years and it seems it wasn’t until Rasmus Hojlund that everything was resolved.
Since Sir Alex left office, Man Utd has struggled to find its old glory. Many generations of coaches come and go, but the Red Devils keep falling into a cycle as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer recently mentioned in the Athletic newspaper: “A new coach comes, things get better, things go downhill, then within a few years, the coach is… dismissed.” However, Ole also said that if there are any cycles or patterns, hopefully, Erik Ten Hag will break them.
In fact, Man Utd’s board of directors has been trying to change the team’s destiny for the past 10 years. However, they have never succeeded in bringing in a truly quality striker.
As Solskjaer recently shared, if he could, he would sign Harry Kane on a weekly basis. A quality striker like Kane will solve many of Man Utd’s problems. Unfortunately, they couldn’t have him.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Radamel Falcao, Edinson Cavani, Cristiano Ronaldo (37-year-old version); Odion Ighalo, Wout Weghorst (on loan), and Romelu Lukaku for 75 million pounds came to Old Trafford. None of these are considered successful except Ronaldo. In terms of statistics, he is the only person to reach the mark of 18 goals in the domestic tournament in a season.
However, in the Premier League, if you want to win the championship or dominate the tournament, you must have a striker like Erling Haaland or Sergio Aguero in the past, who are willing to score more than 20 goals/season.
Man Utd is lagging behind themselves. If someone criticizes Olivier Giroud during his time at Arsenal, then Man Utd has not even had an influential striker like Giroud for the past 10 years.
Now, things will be different when Rasmus Hojlund is wearing the red shirt of Manchester. He is likened to “Haaland of the Danish people”. It would be foolishly optimistic to think that Hojlund will score 52 goals in his first season in England like the “original version”. But looking at what Hojlund showed against Bayern Munich, people have the right to expect.
Hojlund scored a goal with the qualities of a striker. Not flashy, just one shot. On that shot, the computer calculated that the chance of scoring was only 20%. Yet he still scored to the extreme excitement of the Man Utd audience. Hojlund also has something else that Erik ten Hag wants: the ability to pressure when the opponent has the ball at home.
Obviously, this piece of the puzzle is something that Man Utd has needed to perfect for many years. They need a center forward who enthusiastically presses the center back, ready to rush into disputes with the opponent’s defenders.
At the age of 20, Hojlund still has time to perfect many football skills. With his goal this morning, he can help Man Utd fans ease their worries about the name Harry Kane, a person who actually does not belong to Old Trafford’s history.
