Do we need Lukaku to score 30+ goals?

[Camilo]

Lets just hope he doesn't get to 29 goals too quickly - be a shame to have to bench him.

 

[Clique]

You realise Everton scored more goals last season than Utd right?

I think it would be prudent to consider chances created as the better metric than to consider goals scored.

United did have a concern of finishing off chances, especially against smaller teams, which Lukaku would in an ideally world finish. There are no certainties in the world of football, of course, but you can't argue that the quality present in the United setup is higher than the quality present in the Everton setup, surely.

 

[Chesterlestreet]

You need more players in your team to score 10+ goals - Lukaku will do well (and I expect him to score 20+ goals) but unless you have others pitching in fairly regularly with goals it wont mean much. Same situation that occured with Zlatan last season tbh.

Correct.

Unless we do something completely unexpected in the market before the season starts, what it truly comes down to is players from the 2016-17 squad improving their overall game and - yes, crucially - chipping in with more goals.

Lukaku is not Zlatan, though. Which works both ways, you could say. In terms of goal scoring, as such, he isn't a player who will score goals at the detriment of the team performance - to put it in somewhat extreme terms. If he scores 30+ it will likely be as a result of our overall attacking game improving compared to last season. At least I hope so.

In other words, a high total for Lukaku shouldn't rule out what we need from Pogba, Mickey, Rashford, Mata, Martial (I still hope there's a place for him as an important player for us) et al.

It's obviously true that we frequently achieved great things under Fergie without having a grand goal machine in the team (certainly not in post Messi/Ronaldo terms), but for various reasons a direct comparison with those seasons is simply not relevant.

 

[Inter Yer Nan]

You realise Everton scored more goals last season than Utd right?

Yes, but I think it's fair to say we are a more attacking team with more attacking options. I don't want to base everything off of one season.

 

[ivaldo]

You realise Everton scored more goals last season than Utd right?

You realise we have the better players who were just underperforming, right?

 

[Lawman]

Correct.

Unless we do something completely unexpected in the market before the season starts, what it truly comes down to is players from the 2016-17 squad improving their overall game and - yes, crucially - chipping in with more goals.

Lukaku is not Zlatan, though. Which works both ways, you could say. In terms of goal scoring, as such, he isn't a player who will score goals at the detriment of the team performance - to put it in somewhat extreme terms. If he scores 30+ it will likely be as a result of our overall attacking game improving compared to last season. At least I hope so.

In other words, a high total for Lukaku shouldn't rule out what we need from Pogba, Mickey, Rashford, Mata, Martial (I still hope there's a place for him as an important player for us) et al.

It's obviously true that we frequently achieved great things under Fergie without having a grand goal machine in the team (certainly not in post Messi/Ronaldo terms), but for various reasons a direct comparison with those seasons is simply not relevant.

If you're aiming that at Zlatan I think that's very harsh as I saw Martial have a shocking season but looked his demeanour more than anything. Other players Lingard Pogba and Rashford were shockingly wasteful in front of goal that's not Zlatans fault. Mykytarin and Mata were better than got credit for.

We created lots and lots of chances last year if some of the other guys had their shooting boots on we would have easily finished top 4. The fact we never challenged was down to the squad not being good enough in my opinion.

Now Jose has got rid of Rooney Bastian Morgan Depay Adnan and of course Zlatan (at this stage) we will hopefully see some players that can contribute more over the season. We have a younger more vibrant team for sure and won't have the same demands as last year. But I still think we need more, we need a winger that can beat a man on the outside and a defensive midfielder to allow us to go toe to toe with the top teams.

We don't have unlimited funds so Shaw needs to also step up to solve another problem and we will need to be lucky with injuries to win the league in my opinion. Although come next season we will have such a quality base to build on and Jose saying he needs three summers to sort out the team is very honest and I agree with him. But we really are in with a shout this season if we can get a couple of players in and they all hit the ground running.

 

[Chesterlestreet]

If you're aiming that at Zlatan I think that's very harsh...

I'm not.

He did his bit, it was the system as such that didn't quite work.

It has to be the system. You can't depend on any one player to bail you out.

No - I'm not targeting Zlatan at all. That's not the point. If anything, I'm saying that Lukaku isn't good enough to do what Zlatan did. If Lukaku posts exceptional numbers next season it'll be because our attack, as such, has improved. Zlatan might, conceivably, be able to post exceptional numbers in a setup that doesn't quite work - Lukaku isn't able to do that, he isn't anywhere near Zlatan in terms of truly extreme qualities.