Man United failed Rasmus Hojlund but it’s not quite too late to make amends | OneFootball

There are bad footballers, and there are bad Manchester United players and the two are not always the same thing.

Most footballers get to just play football; they can turn up to training, live a clean lifestyle, put in a shift on a Saturday afternoon then fade into the background until next time. But players in United red don’t get the luxury of such simplicity, instead having to carry without respite the weight of history and expectation from the second they arrive at Old Trafford.

For some, this is something to embrace, relish and grow into – whatever else you might think of him Bruno Fernandes does it perfectly – but for many it’s simply too much to bear. And in the aftermath of a brutalising season, it seems that Rasmus Hojlund has been crushed by the cartoon piano of United’s number 9 shirt.

A Red Devil’s bargain

In many ways the young Dane has been doomed from the very beginning, handed a chocolate teapot by faceless men in suits and ties demanding a round of Earl Greys.

Football in general and the Premier League in particular is buckling under the weight of its own commodification, the sums of money involved astronomical and grotesque, and by paying a fee rising to £72m for a raw 20-year-old talent you are attaching a lead weight to its ankle and asking it to swim to shore.

Granted, the very best will shake it off and rise to the surface but the ratios are minute enough to make it a devil’s bargain every time. It’s one yet to pay off for United, and one looking like it’s about to turn sour.

Hojlund didn’t ask to be United’s sixth-most-expensive signing, didn’t dig his heels in and demand the club pay more for him – he was given the chance to play for his boyhood club and leapt at it, consequences be damned, and honestly can you blame him?

Yes, players are paid to deal with pressure, and price tags are an easy stick with which to beat underperforming millionaires, but accusing Hojlund directly of not being a £72m striker makes no sense as he’s never claimed or presumably wanted to be one. It’s necessary to separate the terrible business decision from the terrible first touch to fairly judge the youngster; that still gives critics an awful lot of ammunition, but at least this time it’s justified.

First, second and third fiddle

It’s August 2023 and Hojlund has arrived for his first day at Carrington, fresh from making just 34 appearances for Atalanta after a move from Austrian side Sturm Graz (average attendance less than 15,000 as per sofascore).

Casting his eyes around the dressing room for a mentor, an experienced striker to learn from and ground him after a whirlwind couple of years, the only man available is Anthony Martial – hardly a good advert either for a strong-willed United man or, at that point, a halfway decent striker.

The window slams shut and Erik ten Hag’s centre-forward options are the hungry young Dane and the languid Frenchman – so it remained until December, when Martial finally completed his fall out of favour with the Dutch manager. Thus Hojlund shouldered the entire burden of the number 9 role, playing five times as many minutes as the supposed senior striker over what should have been a bedding-in season in the most demanding league in Europe.

The youngster brought in as an alternative to Harry Kane, and with a name similar to Manchester City’s freakish Norwegian goal machine, was always going to pale in comparison to both. As a backup striker to either, he could have been great – as the first-choice at the biggest club in the world, he choked.

Goals and the lack thereof

Is it any wonder, then, that it took until Boxing Day, 18 games into the season, for the green young player finding his own way in England to bag his first Premier League goal?

The relief on his face and in Old Trafford was like a release and after missing the next game away to Nottingham Forest he embarked on his one and only United purple patch, bagging six goals in five games.

The variety – from an instinctive rocket against Tottenham Hotspur to an improvised chest into the Luton Town net – showed a player with a natural talent for scoring goals and it is disingenuous to claim otherwise, even if it turns out that it was a fleeting phase rather than a continuous state of being. Then came another injury and another barren spell, and suddenly it was the end of a season where he had struggled but been given the benefit of the doubt for the first and last time.

Goodwill towards the Dane soon dissipated over the last campaign, and not without reason. The mercurial Joshua Zirkzee, brought in to relieve the burden on Hojlund despite a modest goal return the year before in Serie A, demonstrated quickly that finding the net wasn’t really his thing when he could be linking play with deft flicks instead.

Thus, to all intents and purposes, Hojlund was still the only player expected to deliver the final product despite giving little indication that he was able to.

Some blame must sit with the manager; Ruben Amorim’s unerring faith was repaid with effort, certainly, but with his abilities deserting him the 22-year-old’s energy turned to frustration and he must have dreaded, not relished, being named in the starting lineup match after match. Zirkzee’s injury tied the Portuguese’s hands slightly, and Chido Obi was clearly not as advanced as fans willed him to be, but false 9s exist and morale must be managed – instead, Hojlund was ground into dust before our very eyes.

What now?

In theory at least this summer will be the rebuild to end all rebuilds at United, and with few safe from a sale their chronically under-performing striker would seem an obvious player to jettison.

Yet if he is truly as bad as he looked last campaign, who would buy him? It turns out Inter Milan, and the Italian giants appear dead set on bringing him in, which prompts just the smallest flutter in the back of your mind – they see something there, just as we all did in January 2024… what if it comes back?

It’s a romantic thought, that Hojlund could be given a reprieve and storm back with a 30-goal season as Amorim’s side go all the way in a title charge, but much less unthinkable that the youngster would find his feet again back in Italy.

And if and when he does, he will be the next Scott McTominay, the next talent crushed at Old Trafford only to blossom elsewhere. It’s something on which the Red Devils should think long and hard.

Make no mistake, the Dane cannot be leading the line for United next season – if he is serious about wanting first-team football or a departure then he must have the latter. But if the Red Devils succeed in signing an established centre-forward – Victor Osimhen perhaps, or Viktor Gyokeres – and Hojlund can swallow his pride and play second fiddle, building confidence away from the limelight, his winter run last year might just come back, all the stronger for having been beaten down by that infamous United pressure.

The next few months will show exactly what the youngster is made of, for better or worse.

Featured image Matt McNulty via Getty Images

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