No new manager bounce
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Ruben Amorim didn’t exactly get off to the perfect start at Manchester United on Sunday, when his team were held to a disappointing 1-1 draw with Ipswich Town at Portman Road Stadium. Had it not been for the heroics of goalkeeper André Onana, the Red Devils may have left with no points at all, and there was little doubt that the new Old Trafford boss was far from happy with what he saw in his first experience of Premier League football. “Not a good result but it is a tough league with high intensity,” said Amorim after the match to the BBC. “We started very well but should have had more of the ball. But we are learning.” And when asked about his team’s performance, the Portuguese tactician noted: “It was really hard for them, they were thinking what to do, it was not fluid which is normal after just two training sessions but they tried hard. They have so much space to improve. But after a draw you never feel the good things.”
Indeed, while Amorim brings with him a renewed sense of hope for fans of the English giants, the young manager will have to work quickly to not only turn Man Utd’s form around in the Premier League but also prove that he is the right man for the job. After a series of managerial mishaps, fans of the club have gotten used to hope turning into despair as another tactician fails to live up to expectations. So what can Amorim do to avoid the same fate as his predecessors at Old Trafford?
Goals, goals and more goals
While the extent of Amorim’s tasks at Man Utd will far exceed what could be written down in a single article, there is one clear problem that has held the club back for a number of years now: they simply don’t score enough goals. Prior to Erik Ten Hag’s dismissal, we explained how the Dutch manager had struggled to get the best out of Man Utd’s front line and that will surely be where Amorim will start with his Old Trafford rebuild in the coming weeks. It’ll come as no surprise for Man Utd fans to learn that their team can’t quite match the firepower on show at Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City each week, but the scale of the gap between these four clubs is really quite damning. Since Ten Hag took over at Old Trafford in the summer of 2022, Man Utd have managed to score just 128 goals in the Premier League. Not only does that comfortably place them in mid-table with just one more goal than Fulham and within touching distance of the likes of West Ham and Crystal Palace, but it’s almost half what rivals Man City have achieved in that same period and well behind the likes of Arsenal and Liverpool.
Naturally, this is due to Man Utd having very few notable goalscorers during Ten Hag’s time at the club. When we tally up the best goalscorers in the Premier League since the start of the 2022/23 season, just one player makes it into the top 25. That, unsurprisingly, is Marcus Rashford, who has 26 goals in 80 games for the club, which places him thirteenth on the list. What’s perhaps even more worrying for the club is that when we extend that list to the top 50 players, only Bruno Fernandes joins his team mate in representing Man Utd by ranking 29th with 20 goals in 84 games. To no great surprise, Man City have four players in the top 50, Arsenal have seven and Liverpool have six. Which perhaps explains why Man Utd struggle to score goals: they simply don’t have enough goalscorers in their team.
Despite having the third most expensively assembled squad in the English top-flight (purchase value: €913.6 million), Amorim has very few proven goalscorers in his squad to pick from. Neither Rashford nor Fernandes typically play in the No.9 position, while the club’s other forward players may be of little use in that regard. Alejandro Garnacho has thrived as a wide player since breaking into the team two seasons ago, but in that time he’s managed just 13 goals in 69 league appearances. Similarly, new signing Joshua Zirkzee may help to bolster the supporting roles in attack, but the Dutch talent was hardly recognised as a consistent goalscorer at former club Bologna, having scored just 14 goals in 58 games for the Serie A side. And while Rasmus Højlund is undoubtedly a classic No.9 and should develop into a dependable striker, a club of Man Utd’s stature should not be relying on a 21-year-old player to be their only striker across multiple competitions.
To Amorim’s credit, he seemed to have noticed this fault immediately and opted to play Rashford as a No.9 against Ipswich. There, the English forward not only scored Man Utd’s only goal but looked far more threatening than he has on the left wing in recent seasons. And while the 27-year-old forward may prefer to play off the left, which allows him to cut inside and either shoot or create chances for his team mates, his record as a No.9 (31 league goals and 14 assists in 99 games or 0.56 goal contributions per 90 minutes) is more or less the same as his record on the left wing (48 goals and 20 assists in 147 games or 0.61 goal contributions per 90). So it makes perfect sense for the new Man Utd manager to pull Rashford into a central role to bolster his attacking options and perhaps find a way for his team to score more goals.
Whether a tweak to the team’s tactics and an improved Rashford will be enough to move Man Utd in the right directions remains to be seen. But few would doubt that this club needs to take a serious look at the players in the squad and where improvements could perhaps be found in the January transfer window. Because if the Old Trafford club don’t find a way to start scoring considerably more goals in the next few months, Amorim may struggle to improve on the unfortunate records set by his predecessors in the Premier League.