No, Manchester United don't need to sign a striker
Just this one more time. I promise you it'll work this time.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Manchester United need to sign a striker. They need a proven goalscorer who can bring guaranteed goals into the team.
Forget the fact that they’ve tried this before. Several times in the last decade in fact. Forget that each attempt further proved the term proven goalscorer didn’t mean anything. Or that guaranteed goals do not exist. I promise you, this time it will be different1.
Manchester United are 13th in the Premier League. They’ve scored 37 goals in their league campaign. Only six clubs have scored fewer. They’re on pace to score just 48 goals this year. That’s even less than the last three seasons which were quite grim themselves, when they registered 57, 58, and 57 goals respectively.
When this happens, members of the mainstream media, like Sam Luckhurst, will undoubtedly bang the drum about how United need to ‘spend big on a striker this summer.’ They’ll say things like they need a ‘proper number 9,’ someone who can 'bang the goals in.’ If United don’t spend big money2 on a center forward they’ll immediately get on the club for lacking ambition.
The operative word here is need. There’s no argument that United’s attack stinks. There’s no question that if the team wants to improve next season they’re going to have to score more goals. That doesn’t mean they need to sign a center forward/striker.
The media can’t comprehend that fact or explain it. It’s too nuanced and they can only provide superficial analysis.
Luckhurst in particular is one of the most stubborn people you’ll ever encounter - with a view of the game that gets more antiquated every year. Luckhurst has never moved past the 1980s view of team needs goal, center forwards score goals, therefore brrrr get center forwards.
What Manchester United need is a goalscorer.
The game has evolved quite a bit since the 80s and 90s. In 2025 a goalscorer doesn’t automatically mean they have to be a striker. It certainly doesn’t mean they have to be that classic fox in the box number 9.
We don’t have to look far to find an example. Liverpool have scored the most goals as they run away with the league this season. The Reds do have a classic center forward but they’ve found that his best position is on the bench. That’s because Liverpool’s main striker - or goalscorer - is their right winger in Mohammed Salah. Their next highest scorer is left winger Luis Diaz, whose nine goals has him joint second along with Cody Gakpo, a player who has played as an attacking midfielder and false nine but has mostly been deployed on the left wing this year.
Liverpool had previously been built around a front three of Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino, and Salah. Firmino played as a false-9 with Mane and Salah handling the goalscoring. When Mane and Firmino left, they tried to rebuild around a more archetypal number 9 in Darwin Nunez, which didn’t go well. Nunez struggled, more importantly Salah struggled and the team had back to back disappointing campaigns.
This season new manager Arne Slot has relegated Nunez to the bench and things are back to running through Salah. Salah is going supernova and everyone on Liverpool has looked a bit better when Darwin isn’t out there clunking up the middle.
Let your best player play at his best. Novel concept.
Liverpool are far from the only example. France won the 2018 World Cup behind a striker who didn’t score any goals. Not that they needed him to, they had Kylian Mbappe on the left wing. Real Madrid won the Champions League four times with their top scorer being the mostly left winger Cristiano Ronaldo. Lionel Messi has spent most of his career on the right wing.
Squad building in football isn’t about getting the best 11 players onto the pitch. You need to have an idea of what you’re trying to do, and then you need to get players who complement each other.
If you want to compete at the top level of European football you need to have a goalscorer. You’re then going to need a complimentary partner for your goalscorer that could get him the ball and/or get him space and provide some secondary goalscoring. Then you’re going to need a third guy who can create chances for these two, and be a goal scoring threat if the defense is pre-occupied with the other two.
That’s your starting point. The actual positions of each player doesn’t matter.
This isn’t to say that those old school center forwards3 aren’t good or can’t be your goalscorer. They most certainly can - but you have to understand the limitations of them and build accordingly.
Those old school number 9’s don’t tend to get involved in much of the game outside of their opponents box. That’s not necessarily bad, but you do need to make sure the other guys on the pitch can accommodate for that. When it comes to those old school target men - even the ones who make the best runs, have great instincts, and are efficient finishers - they are typically beholden to their teammates creating chances for them.
In order to maximize their utility you need to surround them with players who are very good at getting the striker the ball and creating chances for them. Thus you have to recruit accordingly. Now if you’ve got a team of guys who are just looking to get the ball to the center forward you run the risk of becoming one directional in your attack. In order to provide secondary scoring you’re going to need one of your creators to be able to also create chances for themselves, because let’s be honest, that proper number 9 is not going to be much help in that department. He’s not looking to get the ball back out to the winger.
It makes playing with one of these players more difficult but not impossible.
If your top goalscorer is someone who plays out wide you need to have a different type of striker. You’re looking for someone who can play quick exchanges with your goal scorers and create with him - usually someone who has experience playing on the wing when they first came up - while you have a creator on the other wing. Or you probably want a setup where both your wingers are goal scorers and your striker plays as a false-9 to open space up for them. These all require different profiles of player but it’s equally as important to assess what you already have.
In an ideal world you’d just find yourself someone who could do both. Wayne Rooney and Karim Benzema both spent years creating space for Cristiano Ronaldo and then promptly had 30 goal seasons after he left. Harry Kane has spent years dropping deep as a false-9, including a whole season where he played second fiddle to Son Heung-min. But these players are incredibly rare.
It should come as no surprise that Manchester United, a team who often lack any sort of forethought in their transfer strategy, completely botched this.
Manchester United had a goalscorer. Marcus Rashford was a very good, but not great, goalscorer who played out wide. Rashford could lead you to the Champions League, but he couldn’t carry you there.
Several times United tried to pair Rashford with a more classic number 9 at striker. Several times it failed. When United let Rashford be their goal scorer, they were good. He was at his best next to Anthony Martial who could get tight with him and create for him, or drop deep and create space for him.
When Martial’s body gave out in 2022-23 United brought in Wout Weghorst on loan. Weghorst is often ridiculed as a signing but he wasn’t brought in to score goals. He was brought in to create space for Rashford, whether that was as a striker or even playing as the number 10 to reduce the defensive responsibilities of Rashford and allow him more chances to run in behind.
In 2023 United invested heavily in Marcus Rashford to be their goalscorer, giving him a big new contract. A few months later they spent over £60m on Rasmus Hojlund, one of those ‘traditional number 9’s’ to come in and score goals.
It was never going to work. Hojlund isn’t the kind of guy that was going to create for Rashford. In order for it to have any chance of working Rashford would need to become more of a player who primarily created for the striker rather than a goalscorer who could also do a little creation. That’s not a good recipe for building a dangerous attack and the situation didn’t work for anyone.
Rashford is now (temporarily) gone, but it looks like all parties are going to make a concerted effort to make this permanent this summer. Fully removing Rashford’s presence leaves United with an open canvass to fully build their attack however they see fit.
The narrative is that Ruben Amorim needs a traditional number 9 - in the mold of Victor Gyökeres - to be the focal point of his attack just as he had at Sporting. Gyökeres spearheaded Amorim’s attack at Sporting scoring 27 non-penalty goals in all competitions. Gyökeres scored 10 non-penalty goals in 11 league matches before Amorim’s departure this season.
It’s a very compelling argument, but to say Amorim needs this type of player ignores a simple fact. Amorim managed Sporting for four full seasons. Victor Gyökeres was only there for the final one. Prior to Gyökeres’ arrival, Sporting’s primary goal scorers were Pedro Goncalves and Pablo Sarabia. Both were primarily used in the no. 10 role deployed behind the striker in Amorim’s system, with Goncalves scoring 21 non-penalty goals from the number 10 position during Sporting’s title winning 2020-21 campaign.
Amorim doesn’t need one or the other. He’s had success with both. That opens up a lot of doors for United because they’re not beholden to limiting their search for one particular position or type of player. If the best most available player is a classic striker then go ahead and sign him. If that striker isn’t the best available player, then go sign the better one!
Flexibility is crucial for United especially since they’re not one player short. This team still needs wingbacks, central midfielders, and players who can play behind the striker. You can’t blow your entire budget on one player and strikers tend to be the most expensive. If teams know you specifically need a striker and they have one, the price of getting him will simply go up. That’s not something United can afford as they don’t have much money to begin with.
When it comes to (re)building their attack Manchester United are in a pretty good spot. Ruben Amorim needs a goalscorer, but he doesn’t have to be married to that goalscorer coming from a specific position. If United have the right mindset that could really help them find the right player while still leaving room to fill other holes.
Manchester United don’t need a striker. Now whether they should target that specific type of player or a different type of goalscorer is an entirely different question all together. That’s something that will be determined by the type of environment the player will walk into and the players already in the squad.
That sounds a lot like a Part II.
Insert the Arrested Development “but maybe it just might work for us” meme here
conveniently leaving out that it’s money they don’t have
those proper number 9’s
The problem is there are not a whole lot of wide goalscoring forwards like Salah. Hence why Liverpool are struggling to replace him. There's also not tons of 10s that are prolific. So we might as well start with a no 9 and then go from there.
Great piece! I’ll be returning to this during the summer to take as a respite from the incessant transfer talk about Utd needing a striker.