The 300+ goals Man Utd have lost following their £100million frontline rebuild
Manchester United are on track for their worst-ever season of the modern Premier League era – by a country mile.
Perhaps most concerning of all for Ruben Amorim is the shocking lack of proven goalscorers in their squad.
The Red Devils have scored just 28 goals in 25 Premier League matches this season. Only the current bottom three of Ipswich Town, Leicester City and Southampton have managed fewer.
Amorim’s men have failed to score in five of their last nine league outings and looked destined to finish in the bottom half for the first time since 1990.
While questions are being asked of the manager, a lot of the blame must surely be levelled at their recruitment strategy in recent years.
We’ve taken a closer look at the players brought in and sold since Amorim’s predecessor Erik ten Hag took over in the summer of 2022.
Forwards signed:
Joshua Zirkzee
Rasmus Hojlund
Antony
United haven’t recruited many forwards in recent years, but they have spent big – with over £180million outlay on Antony, Hojlund and Zirkzee in each of the last three summers.
Antony was the most expensive of the lot at an eye-watering £81million.
Eyebrows were raised given he’d only scored 30 career goals at that point (24 for Ajax, six for Sao Paolo) – and it soon looked money down the drain as the Brazilian notched just 12 goals (and only five assists) in 96 appearances for United.
Hojlund followed at an initial £64million (plus a potential £8million in add-ons) in August 2023.
The rising Danish star had scored 10 goals in 34 appearances for Atalanta after notching five in 32 for boyhood club FC Copenhagen and 12 in 21 at Austrian side Sturm Graz.
That’s 27 club career goals ahead of his arrival.
Last summer Zirkzee bolstered Ten Hag’s attacking options, a £36million addition off the back of an eye-catching season at Bologna.
Again, young and showing potential but far from proven and prolific with just 36 club career goals to his name (four for Bayern, 14 for Bologna and 18 for Anderlecht).
That’s almost £200million spent on players with less than 100 senior goals between them (93 in total) – only 26 of which were scored in major European leagues.
To be fair, United also had Amad Diallo back into the fold following a successful stint on loan at Sunderland (13 Championship goals in 2022-23) while Alejandro Garnacho has been integrated into the first-team set-up after the starring role he played in United’s 2022 FA Youth Cup win.
Uruguay international Facundo Pellistri also spent time on the fringes of Ten Hag’s squad amid a series of loans away.
Zirkzee (five goals), Antony (12 goals), Hojlund (23 goals), Diallo (11 goals) and Garnacho (23 goals) have returned a combined 74 goals between them over the past three seasons.
Of those, Diallo is out for the remainder of the season and Antony has been loaned out to Real Betis. Zirkzee, Garnacho and Hojlund have scored a combined eight Premier League goals so far this season.
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Forwards let go:
Cristiano Ronaldo
Edinson Cavani
Anthony Martial
Anthony Elanga
Mason Greenwood
Facundo Pellistri
Jadon Sancho*
Marcus Rashford*
Antony*
*On loan for the remainder of the season.
The Manchester United hierarchy have compelling reasons behind offloading each and every one of the forwards they’ve let go in recent years.
Ronaldo struggled to function in the team and had fallen out with Erik ten Hag, Cavani was too old, Martial’s career had hit a complete standstill, Elanga was struggling for guaranteed starts and Nottingham Forest tabled a reasonable offer.
They did the right thing in offloading Greenwood, given his situation.
Pellistri never scored a single goal for the club and had to leave, Sancho never caught fire, nor did Antony, while successive managers have reportedly had issues with Rashford’s application.
Nevertheless, that’s a lot of firepower going out of the team. Not to mention goals from midfield after departures like Paul Pogba, Juan Mata and Scott McTominay.
McTominay, for example, has as many league goals this season (six) as United’s top scorer in the Premier League – Amad, who isn’t expected to play another minute in 2024-25.
It doesn’t look at all unlikely that the Scotland international will have outscored each and every one of United’s forwards come the end of the season.
Ronaldo, Cavani and Martial were all allowed to leave for free. They made a loss on Pellistri, selling him to Panathinaikos for £5.1 million.
They received £26.6million and £15million for Greenwood and Elanga respectively, while Chelsea have an obligation to buy Sancho for a reported fee in the region of £25million.
It remains to be seen what happens next for Rashford and Antony.
That works out at a net spend of over £100million to have rebuilt United’s attack over the past three seasons, all the while taking proven goalscorers out of the team.
The nine attackers that have left in recent years scored a combined 378 goals for the club. Add in Pogba, McTominay and Mata’s goals from midfield and that number stands at 497 goals.
Granted, the likes of Elanga (six), Pellistri (zero), Sancho (12) and Antony (12) didn’t account for many of those, and Ronaldo – while scoring – proved an impossible fit, given his immobility in his advancing years.
After Bruno Fernandes (88 goals), the top scorers in Amorim’s squad are Garnacho and Hojlund with 23 goals apiece – of which only 13 and 12, respectively, have been scored in the Premier League.
Harry Maguire (13 goals) and Casemiro (15 goals) are the only other players on double figures in the current set-up.