Rasums Hojlund is the man of the moment at Manchester United right now, but also in the Premier League as well. The 20-year-old Danish striker has started to turn things around after his rocky beginnings at Old Trafford, as his performances in 2024 have improved massively. Former Atalanta man scored a brace last weekend to earn United another win, this time 2-1 at Luton, which was his sixth consecutive match in which he managed to find the net. He also scored in seven of the last eight matches he featured in, adding two assists in the process as well. So what it is we have learned about the Dane in recent weeks, after his goalscoring prowess finally surfaced?
His Underlying Numbers Show Problems
And most of them are not up to him. Looking at Hojlund’s underlying numbers, we can clearly see we should not get over our heads and expect him to be the player which will alone lead United to glory. In fact, his goalscoring record in the past month and a half has more come in spite of his team. His 0.46 non-penalty expected goals per 90 minutes is good and his actual output of 0.49 non-penalty goals is in line with that. But where Hojlund struggles is to get shots on goal, as he is among the worst strikers in top five leagues, with mere 2.00 shots per 90 minutes. That highlights the problem we talked about not so long ago, pointing out the lack of service he gets, especially from the two wings. Hojlund would often be left alone and would get his shots mostly after deflections and other similar situations.
With mere 17.11 passes attempted per 90 minutes, he ranks in only 18th percentile, showing just how little action he sees during United’s games. He gets 4.63 touches in opposition box (44th percentile), which is unsurprising if you watched any Man United games this season.
Hojlund Is Resourceful And Needs Help
If we look at Hojlund’s statistical profile and compare it with other strikers in Europe’s big five leagues, he most resembles the output of Juventus’ Dusan Vlahovic. Now why is that important? Vlahovic is another talented young striker who plays for a big club which is struggling to play free-flowing attacking football and create loads of chances. In fact, their per 90 goalscoring output is quite similar, but Vlahovic is getting 3.71 shots on goal per 90 minutes, which is more than 150% more than Hojlund gets.
All of this leads us to the simple conclusion that Hojlund has been resourceful and finding his ways to score goals despite not getting a lot of service, not being involved in the play much and spending large chunks of matches just waiting to get some action. All of that is a great reminder just how much United’s team play needs to improve, and only when that happens, we could expect Hojlund to keep scoring at these rates he has managed to achieve in 2024.
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