Do we need Lukaku to score 30+ goals?

Brwned

Have you ever been in love before?
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
50,879
I don't think we do. We may not even want him to. The ideal is for him to score somewhere between 20-30 - ideally on the upper end of the scale. That sounds like a bit of a strange statement but it tallies up pretty strongly against our success under Sir Alex.

Most successful seasons

When we won the treble, Yorke scored 29 goals. When we won the league and cup double (93/94, 95/96), Cantona scored 25 and 19 goals. When we won the league on it own (92/93, 99/00, 00/01, 02/03, 06/07, 12/13), Hughes, Yorke, Sheringham, Ronaldo, van Nistelrooy and Rooney scored an average of 24 goals.

Best goalscoring seasons

We've actually been more successful when our topscorer scored 15-19 goals (92/93, 94/95, 96/97, 04/05, 12/13, 13/14) than when we've scored 30+ (02/03, 03/04, 07/08, 09/10, 12/13). It's just further evidence that spreading around the goals is a much more effective route to success than relying on one supreme goalscorer.

From every angle you look at, scoring a ridiculous amount of goals doesn't necessarily align with huge amounts of success. The only real exception to that is Ronaldo in 07/08...but then that was followed up by us almost repeating a league and CL double, retaining the CL for the first time, in a season which he scored 26 goals. It really emphasised the fact our success in 07/08 was about much more than his incredible goal return.

In every other great season under Sir Alex, it was the 2nd top scorer scoring 20+ goals that made the difference - Hughes in 93/94, Cole in 98/99, Rooney in 08/09, Hernández in 10/11. The greatest example of that is the decade-long gap in elite success between 1999 and 2008 - a period when we had the greatest goalscorer in club history.

In the 4 seasons before van Nistelrooy joined (97-01) Cole was our topscorer with 84 goals and we won 3 league, 1 CL and 1 FA Cup. In the 4 following seasons (01-05) van Nistelrooy scored 127 goals and we won 1 league and 1 FA Cup. It goes some way to answering the question posed by many...
If Lukaku's scoring 30+ goals, what does it matter what he does outside of that?
Click to expand...

The reality is it generally doesn't benefit us to have a goalscoring machine who inhibits the productivity of his team-mates. If we want to be successful again we need Lukaku to be scoring goals - we've never won the league when our top scorer's scored less than 19 - but we don't need him to be a goal machine. We need him to be the figurehead of a coherent attack, like Cole in 97-01, rather than van Nistelrooy in 02-06.
 
Umm, you mixed up 2012/13 and 2013/14 in the Best goalscoring seasons part.
 
It would be nice but Lukaku himself won't be sufficient (vide Ibra and his what, 29 goals last season combined with what, 8 assists?) if others don't step the feck up. Mkhitaryan, Rashford, Martial all have to do better, then we can talk about Fellainis, Herreras and Lingards.
 
I think the main thing people are worried about is the output of the rest of the team. We were heavily reliant on Ibrahimovic to score all our goals because barely anyone else could.

If we have the same issue again next season, yes we need Lukaku to score 30+ goals. If the likes of Rashford, Martial, Mkhitaryan, Mata and Pogba can chip in with 10-15 goals in all competitions then we won't need Lukaku to score 30+.
 
More goals have to come from all around the team, regardless of whether Lukaku hits 20 or 30.
 
If we can get a few players to score around 15 goals with lukaku getting close to 30, then it's fine. Rashford, Martial, Mkhitaryan and even Pogba are all capable of it. The way we play though, I'd guess that Lukaku will be on the end of most of our chances and it'll be geared to him getting over 30 goals. I'd actually be a little bit surprised if he doesn't reach 30 goals at least for the season if we play a 4-3-3 with him as the lone striker mainly throughout the season. He has good movement, is a clinical striker, and we create plenty of chances, just missed a ton last season. Lukaku I would expect to be way more clinical then any of our players were last year. Even with him getting 30-35 goals though, I'd still expect around 15 in all comps from Miki, Martial, Pogba and Rashford. Plenty of games to go around.
 
Siorac said:
Umm, you mixed up 2012/13 and 2013/14 in the Best goalscoring seasons part.
Click to expand...

Yup, but the point remains the same. When we've scored 30+, we've more often been unsuccessful (01/02, 03/04, 09/10, 11/12) than successful (02/03, 07/08, 12/13), which doesn't fit the typical narrative that having a goal machine fires you to success.
 
Need the others to chip in more, really. If Rashford and Martial can have stats closer to their first season and Pogba has more shots go in instead of hitting the woodwork we should be fine. I think Lukaku will get around 30 goals, Rashford and Pogba around 15 and Martial closer to 5.
 
We need everyone to score goals.

Rashford, Pogba, Mata, Mkhi and Lingard mostly. I'm sure Fellaini will pop up with a few aswell.

I honestly think if we're in the title race come January and we bring back Ibra to finish them off, we will be champions.
 
Interestingly enough, Everton were more reliant on Lukaku than we were on Ibrahimovic. He scored 40% of their league goals while Ibrahimovic scored 31% of ours.

That, I'd say, supports the OP's argument. We will need a healthier distribution of goals throughout the team - but that might actually mean Lukaku scores less than he did at Everton where the entire attack was set up to get the best out of him.
 
Horses for courses, you don't buy a player like Lukaku to lead a cohesive attacking unit, you play to him and bank on him scoring loads as he doesn't offer a lot else. I also don't think any of the players we have are likely to score double figures in the league, Rashford might be the best bet under Mourinho to scrape 10 but not playing from the wing where he'll be most of the time. The key will be for Lukaku to spread his scoring out consistently as he's had a tendency to score in batches and then dry up for a spell.
 
If mourinho diesn't step up and perform better as a manager then we won't do well. We have the players to challenge for a title, lukaku mhikitarian pogba herrera mata martial are good enough. Our defence is excellent. Just need Mourinho to do well enough now.
 
Damien said:
Need the others to chip in more, really. If Rashford and Martial can have stats closer to their first season and Pogba has more shots go in instead of hitting the woodwork we should be fine. I think Lukaku will get around 30 goals, Rashford and Pogba around 15 and Martial closer to 5.
Click to expand...

Rashford and Martial played closer to goal under LVG than they did under Mourinho, bar the period after Ibras injury. While they're deployed to wide roles I expect small increase in their stats rather than a glut, personally. Hopefully I'm proven wrong.

As far as the league is concerned I'm expecting to see more from Mkhi first and foremost. He did well in Europa and nicked loads of good goals there for us, but his league form was very poor for a mature 28yo.
 
40+20 is better than 30+20.
No one else's contribution should matter to Lukaku's tally. Especially if we play 1 upfront.
 
I want to him to score as many goals as possible, so long as we're winning.
 
I think it is a ridiculously shallow analysis from the OP. Especially on the part about RvN vs Cole, which totally fails to address how good were the teams during those years and against what teams we competed.

I think that the more Lukaku scores, the better is for us, and this is pretty simple. As long as our game isn't one dimensional (like it was last year with Ibra), it will be fine. Obviously, other players in attack need to contribute more (especially Martial and Mkhitaryan).
 
MadMike said:
Rashford and Martial played closer to goal under LVG than they did under Mourinho, bar the period after Ibras injury. While they're deployed to wide roles I expect small increase in their stats rather than a glut, personally. Hopefully I'm proven wrong.

As far as the league is concerned I'm expecting to see more from Mkhi first and foremost. He did well in Europa and nicked loads of good goals there for us, but his league form was very poor for a mature 28yo.
Click to expand...
I think Rashford will have a few more opportunities at CF than he did last season. Even if not, he's been in good goal scoring form so far this preseason. Hopefully he can continue going into the season.

Good point with Mkhi. He seems to be having a decent preseason, though I've only watched the one match against City. He needs to be more consistent.
 
I don't care who scores them. If lukaku scores 100 by himself and nobody else scores any and spreads them out evenly in 38 games then great.

Fact is though we need to spread them across the whole team, we need a higher average of goals per game.

Tie that in with our better defence and we've got a great shot
 
Yorke scored 29 goals (just 1 less than 30 goal criteria) in 1998-99 - We won treble
Ronaldo scored 42 in 2007-08 - We won double.
George Best scored 32 goals in 1967-68 - We won our first European cup.

I think it's a very simplistic view to draw conclusion that having goal machine is some sort of hindrance to the team. Lukaku should be a goal scoring machine, along with him others should step up and contribute goals.
 
If Rashford scores around 20, Martial scores around 15 and Pogba, Mkhitaryan and Mata chip in with at least 10 each then Lukaku doesn't need to hit 30 although scoring 25 for Everton kind of makes you hope he should be targeting 30 goals.

I don't think it's unrealistic to want Lukaku scoring 25+, Rashford in and around 20, Martial 15+, Pogba, Mkhitaryan and Mata all scoring at least 10 then there's Fellaini, Lingard and our centre backs maybe chipping in with a few and that's not including a new winger if we sign one so I expect goals this season.
 
davidmichael said:
If Rashford scores around 20, Martial scores around 15 and Pogba, Mkhitaryan and Mata chip in with at least 10 each then Lukaku doesn't need to hit 30 although scoring 25 for Everton kind of makes you hope he should be targeting 30 goals.

I don't think it's unrealistic to want Lukaku scoring 25+, Rashford in and around 20, Martial 15+, Pogba, Mkhitaryan and Mata all scoring at least 10 then there's Fellaini, Lingard and our centre backs maybe chipping in with a few and that's not including a new winger if we sign one so I expect goals this season.
Click to expand...

Unless we create a system that has Rashford up front with Lukaku regularly, there's no way he'll get near to 20!
Unless you think he'll go nuts in the cup run outs.
 
He got 25 league goals with Everton last year, he really should be getting 30+ across all competitions.
 
Brwned said:
I don't think we do. We may not even want him to. The ideal is for him to score somewhere between 20-30 - ideally on the upper end of the scale. That sounds like a bit of a strange statement but it tallies up pretty strongly against our success under Sir Alex.

Most successful seasons

When we won the treble, Yorke scored 29 goals. When we won the league and cup double (93/94, 95/96), Cantona scored 25 and 19 goals. When we won the league on it own (92/93, 99/00, 00/01, 02/03, 06/07, 12/13), Hughes, Yorke, Sheringham, Ronaldo, van Nistelrooy and Rooney scored an average of 24 goals.

Best goalscoring seasons

We've actually been more successful when our topscorer scored 15-19 goals (92/93, 94/95, 96/97, 04/05, 12/13, 13/14) than when we've scored 30+ (02/03, 03/04, 07/08, 09/10, 12/13). It's just further evidence that spreading around the goals is a much more effective route to success than relying on one supreme goalscorer.

From every angle you look at, scoring a ridiculous amount of goals doesn't necessarily align with huge amounts of success. The only real exception to that is Ronaldo in 07/08...but then that was followed up by us almost repeating a league and CL double, retaining the CL for the first time, in a season which he scored 26 goals. It really emphasised the fact our success in 07/08 was about much more than his incredible goal return.

In every other great season under Sir Alex, it was the 2nd top scorer scoring 20+ goals that made the difference - Hughes in 93/94, Cole in 98/99, Rooney in 08/09, Hernández in 10/11. The greatest example of that is the decade-long gap in elite success between 1999 and 2008 - a period when we had the greatest goalscorer in club history.

In the 4 seasons before van Nistelrooy joined (97-01) Cole was our topscorer with 84 goals and we won 3 league, 1 CL and 1 FA Cup. In the 4 following seasons (01-05) van Nistelrooy scored 127 goals and we won 1 league and 1 FA Cup. It goes some way to answering the question posed by many...


The reality is it generally doesn't benefit us to have a goalscoring machine who inhibits the productivity of his team-mates. If we want to be successful again we need Lukaku to be scoring goals - we've never won the league when our top scorer's scored less than 19 - but we don't need him to be a goal machine. We need him to be the figurehead of a coherent attack, like Cole in 97-01, rather than van Nistelrooy in 02-06.
Click to expand...

That's a very weird and redundant analysis. The success and failure of those teams had more to do than a second striker scoring more than 20 goals, how many were won using a 4 4 2 instead of a 4 4 3? What were the mids and defenses during that time?
 
Yes I don't see why he couldn't. If we are going to have a chance of the title then we will need him to.
 
Revan said:
I think it is a ridiculously shallow analysis from the OP. Especially on the part about RvN vs Cole, which totally fails to address how good were the teams during those years and against what teams we competed.

I think that the more Lukaku scores, the better is for us, and this is pretty simple. As long as our game isn't one dimensional (like it was last year with Ibra), it will be fine. Obviously, other players in attack need to contribute more (especially Martial and Mkhitaryan).
Click to expand...

You think the analysis is shallow but you agree with the central point? Something doesn't add up there.

MJJ said:
That's a very weird and redundant analysis. The success and failure of those teams had more to do than a second striker scoring more than 20 goals, how many were won using a 4 4 2 instead of a 4 4 3? What were the mids and defenses during that time?
Click to expand...

It's not redundant, it's limited. It only focuses on one part of a much larger picture - no doubt. I'm not saying that the success and failure of teams hinges on the 2nd striker's prowess in front of goal. I'm saying it doesn't hinge on the main strikers productivity. They're two different things.

There's nothing wrong with focusing in on one part of the picture - we do it all the time. People talk about the attack being a critical part of a team's success, and it is a critical part. It doesn't make or break a team on its own, but you'll struggle to win things with a profligate attack. That said, if you took a closer look, I think it's fair to say many overstate the role of the main goalscorer within it.

It's the combined output of the unit that makes the difference, and it's pretty clear that when the team becomes focused around a certain player (van Nistelrooy in the previous decade, van Persie and Rooney in this one) then that'll be to the detriment to the rest of the team, and it'll ultimately make the team less successful despite their individual brilliance.

It goes against the common assumption: having a great goalscorer will lead to great success. The reality is that, if you look at the most successful club in English history, in their most successful period, typically having someone scoring 30+ goals didn't mean the club would be particularly successful. Less so than when their two top scorers were on 20 each, rather than 30 + 10.
 
Whether we want or not, he will score 30+ this season. Lukaku looks pumped up and is ready to score for fun. I would be surprised if he doesn't reach 30 goals mark.
 
Rooney seemed to score 2 or 3 headers every game in 2009/2010 yet we still ended with nothing.

Its not really about Lukaku/Zlatan scoring 20 or 30 goals, the thing is we need everyone else chipping in with double figures as well. Especially considering we have Rashford/Martial/Pogba/Miki/Mata all as part of the front line. All perfectly capable of scoring bucket loads.

And to answer the original question yes we will simply because you can never score enough goals.
 
MJJ said:
That's a very weird and redundant analysis. The success and failure of those teams had more to do than a second striker scoring more than 20 goals, how many were won using a 4 4 2 instead of a 4 4 3? What were the mids and defenses during that time?
Click to expand...

Agree with this.

OP has created an unusual correlation between success and an "ideal" number of goals from the No.9.

Also worth pointing out the the 2nd highest scorer mentioned in the OP was a striker or No.10. We more than likely won't have anyone in that position.

A lone striker has to be scoring more than those who play in a two.
 
I'd actually be surprised if Lukaku doesn't get 35 goals and wouldn't at all be shocked if he reaches 40. Also expect Rashford to get 20.
 
I expect him to comfortably get 30 goals in all competitions. He will be the focal point of our attack and will get a lot of service, we will also likely play well over 50 games next season (we are guaranteed to play 1 Supercup game, 38 league games, 6 CL games, 1 FA Cup game and 1 League Cup game, so that's minimum of 47 games and we will likely advance in minimum 1 competition and very likely in all three) and if he doesn't get injured, he is going to play 80% or more of them.
 
Raoul said:
I'd actually be surprised if Lukaku doesn't get 35 goals and wouldn't at all be shocked if he reaches 40. Also expect Rashford to get 20.
Click to expand...
wow - high expectation

when was the last time a United striker scored 35 in a season?

Ronaldo?

Just checked - Ronaldo and Ruud beforehand
 
Raoul said:
I'd actually be surprised if Lukaku doesn't get 35 goals and wouldn't at all be shocked if he reaches 40. Also expect Rashford to get 20.
Click to expand...

You're expecting Lukaku and Rashford to 40 & 20 respectively.

A little hopeful no?
 
Hughes, Cole, Hernandez and Rooney were all strikers, playing as many games as the leading goalscorer.

That second striker who starts most games doesn't exist anymore. So if Lukaku doesn't pick up the slack who will? Do we expect the third midfielder(the second strikers modern replacement) to chip in the same amount of goals seasoned top level strikers once did?
 
buckooo1978 said:
wow - high expectation

when was the last time a United striker scored 35 in a season?

Ronaldo?
Click to expand...

Ronaldo

As for Lukaku, all the conditions are right for him to get to the next level. He's at the sweet spot in his career where he's just now entering his prime production years, will have the best supporting cast he's ever had, and will have the benefit of a full Euro schedule which should add another 10-15 fixtures.
 
Random Task said:
You're expecting Lukaku and Rashford to 40 & 20 respectively.

A little hopeful no?
Click to expand...

Not in the least. They're both capable of it. You can't look at past performances as indicative of future results. Rashford is improving each year and Lukaku is ready to improve his numbers by about 30-50%.
 
Raoul said:
Ronaldo

As for Lukaku, all the conditions are right for him to get to the next level. He's at the sweet spot in his career where he's just now entering his prime production years, will have the best supporting cast he's ever had, and will have the benefit of a full Euro schedule which should add another 10-15 fixtures.
Click to expand...
as our main striker he should play around 50 games too

I hope you are right
 
I find the logic here strange.

The analysis that a team who are incredibly reliant on one player is a bad thing and that an overly selfish striker might limit an attack are both fair points, but it's ridiculous to quantify those points in terms of goal stats.

Lets agree for the sake of argument that Lukaku is an overly selfish striker who inhibits the productivity of his teammates. How in any way is it better for him to do that and have a poor goal scoring season than to do that and have a great goal scoring season?

There is a valid concern being hinted at in the OP, but Lukaku having a poor goalscoring season (or even just an average one) won't stop him from being a disruptive influence (if he is indeed one), it will just me that it's even more of a problem.

Or to put it another way it's like looking at the goal returns of Jermaine Defoe and Alexis Sanchez last season and concluding that Defoe must have a more rounded game because he scored fewer goals than Sanchez.

Raoul said:
Ronaldo

As for Lukaku, all the conditions are right for him to get to the next level. He's at the sweet spot in his career where he's just now entering his prime production years, will have the best supporting cast he's ever had, and will have the benefit of a full Euro schedule which should add another 10-15 fixtures.
Click to expand...

On the other hand he will have to deal with the expectations of United and learn to cope with teams that sit back and deny space in the final third. Everton, are involved in more open games than United are over the course of a season by several orders of magnitude.

That's not to say he won't make the step up, but he does have to make adjustments, it is not all plain sailing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.