Manchester United have scored a meagre two goals in their last four games and Ruben Amorim must be having sleepless nights thinking about how to address this problem.
Rasmus Hojlund’s goal drought has crossed 15 games now while the head coach recently admitted that summer signing Joshua Zirkzee is not a No 9.
Amad’s season-ending injury could not have come at a worse time for the Portuguese who is having to deal with glaring misses from almost all his forwards.
Alejandro Garnacho is the chief among all. The Argentine started the season in sizzling form with five goals and three assists in eight starts across all competitions.
Garnacho’s poor finishing
Erik ten Hag’s transition-style suited the 20-year-old who always had acres of space to run into with his team mostly counter-attacking opponents.
But since Amorim’s arrival, his goal involvements have fallen off a cliff. He has one goal and two assists in 10 starts across all competitions.
The new head coach wants his players to keep the ball and build attacks slowly while his formation involves two No 10s besides the striker. As a result, Amorim has tweaked Garnacho’s positioning with the Argentina international playing much more centrally.
While stylistically, the United No 17 must be having it tough to align with Amorim’s style, his finishing has let his team and coach down immensely.
As Sky Sports have pointed out, the versatile winger “currently holds the worst conversion rate of any player in the Premier League to have had 10 or more big chances this season.”
Garnacho has had 14 big chances to put the ball in the back of the net but has only managed to convert only twice. The biggest example came in last Sunday’s game against Tottenham Hotspur.
Bruno Fernandes found the Argentine inside the box, who only had the Spurs goalie to beat but he blazed his effort well over. United ended up losing the game 0-1 in what was Amorim’s eight defeat in 14 Premier League games.
He has not been afraid to keep trying, one of his best traits since breaking through to the first team. He had two further shots against Spurs when many others would have shied away from taking another shot.
Garnacho misfiring
In fact, Garnacho has attempted more shots without scoring than any other player in the Premier League since Amorim’s first game at Portman Road. He has missed six big chances in that time, more than any of his teammates.
The Carrington graduate had shown sparks of improvement since his Manchester derby snub, which prompted the head coach to fight with INEOS to keep him at the club despite plenty of interest from Napoli and Chelsea in January.
His future still remains up in the air owing to United’s PSR woes and the co-owners could once again look to sell him in the summer.
Garnacho must work on improving his finishing, starting with Saturday’s Everton tie for his sake and for the club’s sake. Or else, a separation seems to be on the cards.
Feature image Gareth Copley via Getty Images
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Ayantan Chowdhury
Ayantan has worked for 10 years in the Indian sports media industry, writing for the biggest newspapers and websites but his heart was always set on writing about his favourite club. Currently an editor at The Peoples Person. You can follow him on X: @ayantanc_25
