Manchester United legend Bryan Robson tells the team to add goals to challenge Manchester City
Manchester United legend Bryan Robson feels that adding more goals to the squad will enable the Red Devils to challenge Manchester City for the Premier League title.
City have won five of the six league titles, the exception being Liverpool. It is now exactly a decade since United last lifted that silverware.
Since the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson, the Red Devils haven’t even come close to winning it as well. Last season, under Erik ten Hag, although they finished third, there seems to be progression with the style of play and the sustainability of it.
But, it was evident throughout the course of the campaign that scoring goals is something that needs to increase in both volume and frequency. The graphic below from Sky Sports shows how far behind they were in this metric to City and other challengers.
Liverpool in probably their worst season under Jurgen Klopp scored 17 more. Robson is pressing on that point. Here’s what he said (h/t The Busby Babe, via Manchester Evening News):
“As a club we have a lot of hard work to do because Manchester City have set really high standards, which we did in the 90s and 2000s.
“We’ve got to get better to challenge them, I think we are under the new manager… but we know that we need a few more players to add some more goals to the team.
“If we can achieve that, I think with the organisation and discipline the manager instils in the players, I think we can really challenge.”
If we take City’s goal tally in the league season as a reference point, United are 36 goals short of challenging for a Premier League title.
Now, Marcus Rashford scored a lot of goals last season but did not much from others. If we look at the numbers, Rashford scored 17 league goals. The second-highest was eight by Bruno Fernandes [Whoscored].
If ten Hag wants his team to challenge, one of the forwards have to touch the 25-goal mark with two others crossing the 10-mark at the least.
Can they do that? The talent is there. The potential addition of Rasmus Hojlund could be helpful because depending on the likes of Anthony Martial isn’t good when you are virtually aiming for perfection every single week of the season.
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Somebody needs to become a Robin van Persie by leading the attack and carrying others too.