Why Rasmus Hojlund Isn't Scoring Goals For Man United
Another game and another blank for Man U's striker Rasmus Hojlund.
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00:00 Hello everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here and Manchester United are out the Champions
00:07 League and some people on the internet think that's Rasmus Hoyland's fault.
00:12 Now okay, let's just take that point at face value.
00:14 All they really needed to do for a large part of that game was score a goal and they signed
00:18 Rasmus Hoyland for a lot of money to score goals and he didn't score any goals.
00:23 So even if we're not going to blame him, and I'm not going to blame him, it does still
00:26 beg the question, why is Rasmus Hoyland not scoring goals?
00:29 But I don't know if you saw this, very handily, TNT Sport aired a two hour documentary last
00:35 night about why Rasmus Hoyland can't score goals for Man United.
00:39 It was the Bayern Munich game.
00:41 Alright, so last night Man United, supposed to be a 4-2-3-1 as you can see here, but as
00:47 anybody with eyes will notice, Scott McTominay does not sit in the pivot, he does not hold
00:51 an armour bar, it ends up being more like a 4-3-3, I forgot what numbers were for a
00:57 second there, McTominay gets into this channel, he runs around like a headless chicken, an
01:00 armour bar, dashes over to try and cover a cross.
01:03 That's a whole other story, Adam Monk covered it in a video, you can go watch that if you
01:07 want to watch about McTominay.
01:08 And with this just largely quite dysfunctional shape, the burden of goals fell onto the shoulders
01:12 of Rasmus Hoyland and he amassed a grand total of 18 touches in the entire game and not one
01:19 single shot.
01:20 But why?
01:21 Why in a game when Manchester United just needed to score a goal, the one thing they've
01:25 actually been able to do quite well in the Champions League this season, yes they've
01:28 conceded 15 and that's a record in of itself, but they have still scored loads of goals.
01:33 Hoyland scored loads of goals, why in this game when that's all they needed, could they
01:38 not even manufacture a chance for him?
01:40 Well, and just enormously convenient for this video, there was a living lesson at the other
01:45 end of the pitch in how you sign a big money centre forward, put the burden of goals upon
01:50 them, but make sure they're capable of delivering that.
01:53 If we just wave the old magic wand here, they're kind of the same colour, is Harry Kane.
01:59 Just like Hoyland, he also moved this summer for like a bajillion squillion quid into a
02:03 new league with a completely new team, a new level of expectation.
02:07 But unlike Hoyland, who has played, and I'm just going to bring this stat up, 800 minutes
02:11 without registering a goal or assist, he has 22 goals and 8 assists in just 20 games.
02:18 I'm not a maths guy, I didn't work anywhere near hard enough in school, but that is, I
02:21 think off the top of my head, f***ing loads.
02:24 But why is it working so well for him and just hardly at all for Hoyland?
02:28 Well, because Bayern have done all the things you're supposed to do when you make that kind
02:33 of signing.
02:34 But just in its most basic form, when you drop that kind of money on a centre forward,
02:37 they have to start, you are bringing them in to play.
02:40 They're not an option, they're not someone who you're going to be flexible with, they
02:43 should be going through the middle and getting most of your goals.
02:45 And unless they're just some magical perfect fit from some kind of footballing dreamland,
02:50 you have to make adaptations to make that transition easy.
02:53 Now there's like 10 other players here and possibly a well-established system, so you
02:57 will have to make changes both individually and structurally to play to their strengths.
03:01 But likewise, there are 10 other players here and probably an established system, so your
03:05 new star player will have to make adjustments themselves to play to the strengths of the
03:10 team.
03:11 You have to meet somewhere in the middle.
03:12 So the challenge that Bayern had to overcome with Kane was they had a centre forward who'd
03:16 like to drop deep into these positions, but as you can see here, Bayern employ a number
03:20 10, so we can't really do that.
03:22 You just end up crowding the same area.
03:24 So what Harry Kane looks to do instead now is push right up onto the defence when Bayern
03:29 are moving forward to push the entire defensive line back and leave more space for the three
03:34 attackers.
03:35 They really enjoy playing behind Kane.
03:37 Like case in point, Leroy Sané has already scored as many goals this season for Bayern
03:42 as he had last season.
03:43 I saw the commentator last night saying he's probably enjoying the best football of his
03:47 career.
03:48 I wonder why.
03:49 Harry Kane has adapted his game to suit Bayern's other strengths.
03:51 If you remember Tottenham, let's pretend there's no number 10 here, he would drop into that
03:54 space and he'd get Son or whoever making runs in behind.
03:57 He would use that kind of pocket of space to help create, but he can't do that at Bayern
04:01 because A, there's another player there and these two players don't want to be doing that.
04:04 So he's changed his game and the team have benefited as a whole.
04:08 But likewise, the team have changed their game to benefit Kane because while he does
04:12 push up on the defence, there are times where he does want to drop deep and get on the ball.
04:16 So when that happens, the number 10, usually Moussala, will move out to a flank to provide
04:21 an overload in the wide areas to allow somebody to get in behind.
04:24 And when that happens, then Kane is capable of playing those balls in like he was doing
04:27 at Tottenham and getting assists that way.
04:29 That's why he's got eight.
04:30 But also, and arguably even more important than that, something Bayern struggled with
04:33 last year was beating a press.
04:35 They were good at having the ball around the back, but they didn't really have anybody
04:39 who could just open that up.
04:40 They tended to struggle a bit when they got really, really pressurised.
04:44 But now, because Kane is big and strong and is excellently controlling the ball and bringing
04:48 others into play, when Bayern get penned in, I'll just show you what that looks like in
04:52 case you somehow can't imagine it, when Bayern get all penned in, Harry Kane just shows for
04:57 it for a long ball and they can just go direct into Kane.
05:00 He holds it up really well.
05:01 He brings others into play and they beat presses now quite frequently by just going long into
05:07 him.
05:08 That's really changed how they play.
05:09 So just to recap there, Harry Kane playing to Bayern's strengths and Bayern benefiting
05:13 as a result, but also Bayern playing to Harry Kane's strengths and Harry Kane benefiting
05:18 as a result.
05:19 And the reason you're not seeing anywhere near this level of success or fruitility,
05:23 is that a word?
05:24 Fruitility, as in something can be fruitful.
05:26 I may have made that up.
05:27 It's because Manchester United are not playing to Rasmus Hoyland's strengths.
05:31 And when Rasmus Hoyland is adapting his game to try and do what Man United need him to
05:35 do, that is so far out of his comfort zone.
05:38 It doesn't work.
05:39 Rasmus Hoyland is a pure finisher.
05:41 His link-up play isn't particularly good.
05:43 He hates playing with his back to goal, but what he's excellent at is timing a really
05:47 quick run, getting on the end of something and finishing neatly.
05:50 And if we look at his goals in the Champions League this season, that's where they've all
05:53 come from.
05:54 A driving run into the box, somebody getting in a good position and him just reading the
05:58 play and reading the defenders' movements to steal in at the last second and finish
06:03 that off.
06:04 It's easy because it's a one-touch finish, but it's an incredibly rare skill to be able
06:08 to predictably and consistently read defenders that way.
06:12 Add to that that he's really quick and determined, and if he finds himself with loads of space
06:16 in behind, he can absolutely kill teams.
06:17 I think this goal is brilliant.
06:19 That is genuinely the finish of an elite-level striker.
06:22 He just has to be in that situation for it to happen.
06:25 But the problem Manchester United have been having in the Premier League and had all last
06:29 night against Bayern is that they find these situations very difficult to manufacture.
06:34 Like predominantly this season you've had Marcus Rashford, Anthony or Gennaccio in those
06:38 wide areas, and those are three players you would not call great assisters, for lack of
06:45 a better term.
06:48 Like you get the three of them on Jeremy Kyle, lie detector episode, Graham's on the show
06:53 and they will tell you, whether they like it or not, that what they really want to be
06:56 doing is scoring goals, not putting things on a plate for other people.
07:00 And just to give you a tedious statistical way of looking at this, these are their FB
07:04 ref profiles for sort of chance creation.
07:06 You can see that they're pretty middling, they're pretty average, they make a lot of
07:09 key passes, which is a pass that leads to a shot, and they get the ball in to the box
07:13 a lot.
07:14 But just look, this number here, the XA.
07:16 Now if you've never heard of XA before, don't turn off, it's just relatively useful for
07:20 the point I'm making.
07:21 It's like the expected assist, right?
07:24 So it measures the quality of the chance a player gets from a pass they make from which
07:28 they then have a shot.
07:30 So if you pass the ball to somebody and they get a shot, but it's from like here or there,
07:33 obviously that's going to score quite low because they've got a low chance of scoring
07:36 from that.
07:37 But if you manage to put passes into the box where they're right in front of the goal and
07:40 there's no defenders around, you've picked them out really well, you'll score quite high.
07:43 Like I know you won't appreciate the comparison Manchester United fans, but this are the same
07:47 numbers for Mo Salah, a player who simply adores to cut the ball back across goal for
07:52 someone to get a tap in.
07:53 Therefore creating a very easy chance.
07:55 He's good at doing that.
07:57 He's good at making goals for other people.
07:59 So that's where he scores.
08:00 And if you are looking at that thinking, but it's still decimal numbers, it's not that
08:04 much bigger.
08:05 Like think about it this way, if you're scoring like point one, you're liable to create a
08:08 goal like once every 10 games, which is ages.
08:12 And if you're scoring like point two five or point three, you're liable to create a
08:16 goal every three or four games, which you know, it's not phenomenal, but it's much better
08:20 than 10.
08:21 James Hoyland isn't scoring goals fundamentally because he's not really getting the service
08:25 required for a player like him to get a lot of goals.
08:29 What Manchester United really need is a player who can do what Harry Kane does in regards
08:34 to the link up and the movement and getting involved elsewhere.
08:37 But they haven't got that.
08:38 They've got a pure poacher.
08:39 They've got a pure finisher.
08:41 And you could see last night, they were crying out for Hoyland to hold the ball up and bring
08:46 them up the field.
08:47 But that's just not what he can do.
08:49 Virtually every single time last night he had his back to goal.
08:53 The defence just bullied him.
08:54 He doesn't have the skill set or the experience to know how to deal with those situations.
08:59 Every time it came into him, Bayern pretty much just turned it over or he put it out
09:03 of play.
09:04 It's just, it was horrible to watch.
09:05 Like going into that game, Hoyland was like the joint top scorer in the Champions League
09:09 because Manchester United have had so little control of these games.
09:13 They've been end to end.
09:14 They've been chaotic.
09:15 There's been space in behind.
09:16 There's been breakaway attacks.
09:17 There's been stuff that really suits him.
09:19 And last night, where they tried to have as much control as possible, where they were
09:22 incredibly conservative by their standards, by they didn't want to let Bayern in, they
09:26 needed somebody to help move them up the pitch.
09:29 Lo and behold, that's the worst game he's had in the Champions League.
09:32 And thus the reason he's not scoring in the Premier League is because those games tend
09:35 to be a lot more like the Bayern one, where they're neat and compact and they try not
09:39 to open up too much than they do the Galatasaray one, which was just pure chaos with space
09:44 to run into absolutely everywhere.
09:45 Now, whether you want to consider this a failure in terms of Rasmus, because he's not adapting
09:49 his game well enough or a failure of management because they're selecting the wrong players
09:53 for the wrong games or even a failure of recruitment because they've gone and spent loads of money
09:57 on a player who's largely unsuitable for a lot of the games they're having.
10:01 That's that's up to you.
10:02 I would say it's all three.
10:03 But the difference between all those three things is that Rasmus Hoyland is 20 years
10:07 old.
10:08 I would imagine when he was going to Manchester United, they gave him some big pitch about
10:11 how they knew how to get the best out of him and how they were going to use him.
10:14 That probably sounded really, really great.
10:16 I don't think anybody at that age would go, let me just stop you there, man, trying to
10:20 give me the dream move of my career.
10:23 I worry about the service.
10:24 And if you really do want to criticise him and say, well, he should still have more than
10:27 zero goals in the Premier League, if you look at the chances he's had, maybe one or two
10:31 of them should have gone in.
10:33 But even at this point, a one or two goal return for the amount of money they spent
10:38 would be terrible.
10:39 So I agree, his finishing could improve, but not so much.
10:42 It's going to make the difference here.
10:44 I might whisper it, but if Man United want to get the best out of Rasmus Hoyland, they
10:47 need to fundamentally change the way they play football.
10:51 And you know what really fundamentally changes the way you play football?
10:55 Sacking your man.
10:56 But that's another video for another time.
10:59 Who's they got on the weekend, actually?
11:01 Oh dear.
11:02 Right.
11:03 Well, if you enjoyed that video, please do subscribe to us here at 442 on YouTube.
11:05 Or you can get me across the entire social spectrum at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y, 442 socials
11:10 in the corner of the video.
11:11 I've got the new magazine, but it's here.
11:14 Ta-da!
11:15 That looks real and convincing, I'm sure.
11:17 Anyway, let us know what you make of Rasmus Hoyland and this video in the comments below.
11:20 Of course, don't forget to do all the stuff I've already said.
11:22 And until next time, I've been Adam Cleary.
11:25 This has been 442.
11:26 Ooh, no strings.
11:27 And I'll see you soon.
11:28 Bye!
11:28 Bye!