Challenges facing Erik ten Hag at Man United’s attack

Manchester United fans taking a morning stroll down Marine Parade in Southampton this weekend en route to St Mary’s can be forgiven if memories of one particular visit come flooding back.

It has been, almost exactly, 12 years since a then-recently-signed Robin van Persie, who arrived that summer for £29million from Arsenal, produced a match-winning hat-trick to secure a 3-2 win.

He missed a penalty, too. It could have been four on the day for the Dutchman, who was carrying the goalscoring load in the absence of an injured Wayne Rooney.

His hat-trick, which saw him given a 9/10 grade in the next day’s Mail Sport report by my colleague Matt Barlow, made it four in two starts and that was a sign of things to come.

Van Persie would go on to score 29 goals in all competitions that season – 26 in the league – as United clinched the Premier League title. How badly Erik ten Hag could do with a sure-fire goal machine like Van Persie for his goal-shy United.

A nod to that 2012-13 season and figures show Van Persie contributed 38 goals/assists, while Rooney accounted for 26 G/A.

Fast forward a bit, to last season to be exact, and this goal-shy version of United finished as the joint-lowest scorers in the top half of the league table, with 57 goals from 38 games.

No player at the club managed more than 10 league goals – captain Bruno Fernandes and Rasmus Hojlund hit that total – while their third top scorer, Scott McTominay, who netted seven, was sold off to Napoli this summer.

Let’s take an even closer look at their anaemia, shall we.

According to StatMuse data, last season Ten Hag’s United, who finished eighth, their worst ranking in the Premier League era, came in at 16th overall for xG (Expected Goals) with 54.06.

They ranked 10th for touches in the opposition’s box with 1,111; ranked 11th in the league for shots on target with 193; ranked 12th for goals scored on the counter attack with three.

Three games into the new season then, with another £200m spent to take the spending under Ten Hag past £600m, have things improved?

Well, after games against Fulham, Brighton and Liverpool they rank 10th for xG with 4.64, rank 11th for shots on target with 12, and rank 16th with a total of 33 shots.

What Ineos don’t need pointing out to them is no ranking above reads as 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th.

There are caveats to the data, not least the fact that Alejandro Garnacho, who scored seven times last season, will feel he should already have two to his name having missed an open goal versus Fulham, and seen a goal against Brighton chalked off because Joshua Zirkzee’s knee on the line was offside.

But there have long been concerns over United’s worrying lack of goals and one pertinent example came via former United midfielder Paul Scholes following a 2-0 defeat to West Ham in December 2023.

Scholes, working for TNT Sports as a pundit that day, had just seen United go four games without scoring a goal, the first time they’d stuttered like that since 1992.

‘United have got problems,’ he said then. ‘Goalscoring is a big issue, that’s four games without a goal and without creating, really. Second half I can’t think of a save the [West Ham] goalkeeper had to make.’

He continued: ‘You usually go through seasons where one or two of your forwards are maybe struggling with a bit of confidence and they can’t score goals, but it’s every single one of them.

‘There are no goals coming from anywhere. Goalscoring is a real problem, they’ve got to sort that somehow.’

Even more recently, former United striker Dwight Yorke is not at all convinced that since Scholes fired his warning, much has been done in the transfer market to fix issues.

Yorke told talkSPORT’s Inside Devils show: ‘I would say with United attacking, with strikers at the moment, I think that right now where United is at, they’re buying players to finish fourth.

‘What I mean by that is that, the players they’re bringing in are good players, they’re not bad. But they’re not the elite players that United normally are associated with. So you will get that type of performance that we need to get back in the top four.’

With Hojlund, who picked up an injury during pre-season, still sidelined for a little longer, at Southampton the onus is going to fall upon Marcus Rashford and Zirkzee, the summer signing from Bologna.

The issue in that is that one claims to be a ‘9.5’ rather than a traditional No 9 forward and the other continues to look a shadow of the player who scored 30 goals in Ten Hag’s first season in charge.

Rashford in particular comes under immense amounts of pressure because people have seen how high his ceiling is. The worrying question over the past 12 months is how low is his floor?

‘He’s had two games this season Marcus Rashford and he’s not had one shot at goal,’ BBC pundit Alan Shearer said following United’s defeat to Brighton, in criticism that irked boss Ten Hag.

‘Fifty-seven goals they [Manchester United] scored last season. That was the worst in the top half. Ruud van Nistelrooy has been brought into there. He’s going to have to work his magic somehow.’

Through three games Rashford has zero goals and zero assists and heads to St Mary’s with his last competitive goal for United coming in an FA Cup win versus Liverpool on March 17.

Then there is Zirkzee, a different Dutchman to have recently arrived 12 years on from the league-winning impact of Van Persie.

Now while nobody is expecting Zirkzee to produce similar returns, his own admission that he himself is more of a link-up man and a creator again leaves United worryingly light of scorers.

Zirkzee scored 11 goals and registered five assists for Bologna last season and sees himself as a 9.5.

‘I occasionally drop down to midfield to help the team, but I’m not a traditional No 9 or No 10,’ he said after scoring on his debut versus Fulham.

‘I think I have excellent skills, and I want to use them to help the team,’ he added. ‘Being different is good, right?’

Beyond the data there is the eye test which shows the number of chances United should have taken in the opener against Fulham – Fernandes in particular had two gilt-edged opportunities, as well as the aforementioned Garnacho miss – while they really should have taken victory at Brighton were it not for the tightest of offside calls on the line.

The issue for Ten Hag and United right now is that excuses are no longer being accepted as operational currency for an expectant Ineos leadership team. 

With an attacking unit that has had more than £200m spent on it in recent seasons, and contracts for some as high as £325,000 a week, they need goals and they need them now.

How they will hope Zirkzee can channel the spirit of Van Persie on the south coast this weekend.