My Take On The Manchester United Striker Situation

I’d like to consider the Manchester United striker debate from a slightly different perspective to how it’s been looked at so far. Last season our biggest problem was a lack of goals. We created a decent amount of chances, but wasted far too many of them.

Now this was for two reasons, firstly the players we had who were taking the most shots are not our most clinical players. For all his faults in Højlund, we actually have a striker who finishes at a well above average rate, but he hardly ever gets a shot. While Garnacho has a terrible conversation rate (worst in our squad amongst the forwards) yet he takes the highest amount of shots per game in the squad.

Secondly, a lot of our shots are taken from poor positions, too far out or too wide of the goal. This is due to our players’ poor attacking movement and decision making. Players not making the right runs at the right times, or when they do the player on the ball doesn’t recognise it or only realises too late.

For both issues the biggest factor in the problem is the quality of the players more so than the system they are playing. Now a lot has been made about the striker, ‘the guy who’s responsibility it is to score the goals’. Or at least that seems to be what the majority of the fan base have been saying.

However, the club faced a problem; there are very few elite strikers who you can rely on to get you 20 league goals. In fact across Europe’s top 5 leagues, only 15 players scored 20 or more league goals. Now not all of these 15 players are central strikers, in fact only 8 of them are.

You then have some playing for clubs such as Real Madrid or Bayern Munich. Clubs where we aren’t going to be able to take their best player, or rival English Premier League (EPL) clubs who won’t want to sell to us, and will charge a premium for their players. While if we sign a player with no EPL experience then we run the risk of them not being able to match their goal output in our league.

So with so few elite options available, our limited budget and with better placed competitors for those few signings what could we do to solve the issue? Well we did compete for a couple of those premium elite options, yet we were either priced out or they chose to move to a team that is better placed to challenge for major honours over the next couple of seasons at least.

I actually think the club have been really cute with their approach to this transfer window. Instead of going all out and fighting what was always likely to be a losing battle for those limited few elite strikers, they chose what I think to be a much smarter path.

Instead they focused on bringing in EPL proven goalscorers who don’t typically play as the central striker. Players like Cunha and Mbeumo. Now neither of these guys will likely get 20 EPL goals this coming season. But they solve BOTH of the major issues when it comes to our lack of goal last season.

They are both very clinical in front of goal, as seen with both of them regularly out performing their xG over the past few seasons. However, they both are known for making much better decisions when on the ball, shown by their creative output and the number of high quality chances they make for their teammates and the number of assists they get each season.

In signing Cunha and Mbeumo, the club have managed to solve both issues that lead to the limited number of goals we scored last season, while also adding EPL proven quality players. Which should mean that their output is far more likely to be the same for us as it was for their previous club.

This move also takes away the pressure of having to sign a striker that will get us 20 league goals. You don’t need to rely on a 20 league goals a season striker if you have two other forwards who are getting 15 league goals each themselves.

Spreading the goal scoring burden around the team is both a more realistic way of being able to compete and score enough goals, and reduces our risk that injury to just one key player could derail our season.

So does that mean we don’t need a new striker? Absolutely not, a big part of why both Cunha and Mbeumo were able to be so productive last season is due to them playing with a striker who could occupy defenders to create space and time for Cunha and Mbeumo to work their skills. Strand Larsen and Wissa both had very good seasons in front of goal. It was a combination of their work at CF and that if Cunha and Mbeumo that enable all of them to have a productive season.

This is something we as fans are quick to forget, it is a team game. You need your teammates doing all the right things well for you to be able to play your game to the best of your ability.

We 100% need a new striker, but that striker doesn’t need to be a 20+ goal a season striker, signing someone who is the right profile to get the best out of the rest of the team as well as being able to pitch in with 12-15 league goals is enough for us.

That opens up far more options for us up front as we don’t need to be limited to only those few near impossible to sign elite strikers.

We need someone who has good movement, good hold up and link play, high work rate and intelligent pressing, physical strong and quick, and who can score 10-15 league goals fairly consistently while also pitching in with 5-8 assists and who will make chances for his teammates even when he doesn’t touch the ball, but his movements will make space for others.

While none of us would have had players like Watkins or Jackson as our first choice options, both actually fit what we need pretty well and both are actually attainable this summer. Either one would massively improve us as a team, even if as individuals they aren’t as good as some of the other options we’ve been linked to. There are others as well who also meet the needs and could be as good or potentially even better options, although they might also be more of a gamble with them not being tested in the EPL.

Written by Shappy July 24 2025 13:16:20