How Ruben Amorim can turn isolated Rasmus Hojlund into Man Utd’s own Viktor Gyokeres

Dion Dublin has briefly put himself in Rasmus Hojlund’s shoes and is contemplating what life would be like for a centre-forward in the current Manchester United team. “If I was in that United side I’d probably lose a lot of pals on match days because of the way I’d react to players not crossing the ball,” the former United striker tells Telegraph Sport.

“I get it’s different times, different kinds of players, a different era, but, as a winger, you need to deliver the ball. Your responsibility is to provide that end product. How many times does Alejandro Garnacho, as good a player as he is, get down the wing and cross it? Antony, [Marcus] Rashford the same?”

Of the many challenges facing Ruben Amorim as United’s new head coach, addressing the chronic shortage of goals in a team who finished with a negative goal difference under Erik ten Hag last season and who this term have conceded as many as they have scored, is principal among them.

Viktor Gyokeres plundered 66 goals in 68 matches under Amorim for Sporting following a £20 million move from Coventry in July last year, so it feels somewhat inevitable the prolific Sweden striker is now being heavily linked with a summer move to United.

Internally, though, United wonder if they may already have a Gyokeres-style solution in their midst. “I would be licking my lips if I was Hojlund,” says Danny Webber, the former United striker and academy graduate who watches the club regularly in his role as a pundit for MUTV. “Gyokeres was good at Coventry and already a full international. You don’t get bought by Sporting from there if you’re not doing the right things. But I do think Amorim took his game on to another level.”

There are no guarantees Amorim will do for Højlund at United what he did for another Scandinavian in Lisbon, even if the club really do need their £72 million signing from Atalanta to shine after so many transfer disappointments. But the profiles and raw attributes of the two players are not dissimilar – strength, speed, running power, a wide variety of finishing and hard working – and Amorim may feel he has a useful template from which to cultivate the Denmark striker.

The difference, of course, is Gyokeres has benefited from a cohesive structure and system that played to his strengths, from which his output – and confidence – soared. Hojlund, by contrast, has had much the opposite at United: a disjointed team who play in moments, with few established patterns of play and who seldom cross the ball.

At the very least, Amorim needs to find a way to improve the supply line to Hojlund at the same time as getting the striker into the positions where he is most dangerous.

“The responsibility for Hojlund not scoring goals isn’t just his,” Dublin says. “United don’t cross the ball. Sporting do. United’s wingers, for example, chop back all the time.”

Only Everton have scored fewer goals in the Premier League from crosses than United since the start of last season, and the success of United’s delivery from wide areas is among the worst in the top flight over that period – and six percentage points lower than that of Sporting. For a player such as Hojlund, whose 18 goals for United have mostly come from inside 12 yards, that is a problem, and his palpable frustration at poor or delayed delivery is often shared by United supporters.

The width in Amorim’s 3-4-2-1 system is likely to come predominantly from the wing-backs, and Dublin hopes to see a move away from inverted wingers, where the tendency is always to cut inside.

“I still don’t agree with right-footers on the left and left-footers on the right,” he explains. “If you’re Garnacho on the left or Antony playing on the right, all your crosses are going into the keeper – if you’re on the other side they’re coming away from the keeper and you have more room then to adjust as a centre-forward.

“You also get that reluctance to beat the man on the outside and if you are playing inverted you have an excuse to keep chopping back on to your good foot all the time, but there shouldn’t be any excuse to deliver end product.”

United’s issues, in reality, are not confined to the flanks. Hojlund’s positional challenges within a flawed set-up are reflected in the areas in which he is receiving the ball.

He is among the lowest-ranked players for passes received in the penalty area as well as his team’s attacking half and attacking third. Manchester City’s Erling Haaland, on the other hand, is receiving far more passes closer to the opponent’s goal. Almost 30 per cent of passes into the City striker end in the penalty area, whereas that figure stands at just 12.2 per cent for Hojlund, who is receiving more than half of his passes in the middle third – invariably a battleground with defenders – compared to just 35 per cent for Haaland.

It should come as little surprise then that, of the players who have scored 10 or more goals in the Premier League since the start of last season, Hojlund is averaging among the fewest touches in the opposition box per 90 minutes (4.1) and, just as troublingly, the fewest shots (1.5). Haaland, by comparison, averages 7.1 touches and 4.5 shots per game. “That shows something isn’t right,” Dublin says.

In a third of his 55 games for United, Hojlund has not had a single shot, and in 21 of those matches he has registered one or no touches in the opposition box. By contrast, in half of his 63 games for Sporting, Gyokeres has taken at least seven touches in the opposition box and has averaged a whopping 10.2 per 90 minutes over the past 16 months in the Portuguese Primeira Liga – evidence of Amorim frequently getting his centre-forward into those areas where he does most damage.

Webber does not believe United’s systematic problems are solely to blame for Hojlund’s struggles to get into the right areas of the pitch more often. He feels the Dane too often becomes embroiled in draining wrestling matches with opposition centre-backs that expend too much of his energy and leave him “hitting a brick wall” after an hour and unable to make runs in behind.

Webber believes Hojlund needs to work on his body shape and movement to make him “less contactable” with defenders and play less with his back to goal and instead learn to “almost tap the centre-half and push away” when receiving the ball to buy that space.

Haaland, he says, excels at it but also cites Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins as an example of a forward who has worked tirelessly to hone and perfect those sharp movements and feels this is an area where Amorim could specifically help Hojlund to develop. Too often Hojlund comes short to receive the ball to feet, but, if he can learn to spin and angle those runs more often, Webber believes United have midfielders in Bruno Fernandes, Christian Eriksen and Casemiro who will release him.

“He has this sense of responsibility where he wants to lead the line and that comes from a good place, but that doesn’t mean it has to be done in a macho way, if that makes sense,” Webber says. “The best strikers are elusive –- you can’t touch them – and if you do touch then the physicality is there and they know how to use their body. I just think Rasmus is too easy for defenders to touch at the moment. It’s the wrong battle.”

Hojlund has shown glimpses of his devastating running power from deep – notably his second goal in a 3-2 defeat against Galatasaray last season – but not frequently enough.

“If he’s running beside you or past you, you’re not stopping him, he’s like a steam train,” Webber adds. “But he’s got to get it in his game where he’s doing that regularly.”

Dublin is of the opinion that part of the issue stems from Hojlund feeling the physical fight is the “only way he can get into the game”, because he is too often left isolated in other ways. As a 21-year-old signed for a huge fee with few alternative options in attack, he has also not had the luxury of being gradually integrated into the team, nor had a more experienced head to lean upon and learn from. But both Dublin and Webber agree that if Amorim can get him properly serviced in the right positions, United have an instinctive and natural finisher who can shoot off either foot and has a fierce work ethic to match.

The statistics certainly support that view. Since arriving in England, Hojlund has the fourth-highest conversion rate (25.6 per cent) among players who have attempted at least 40 shots, better even than Haaland (22.2 per cent) and Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah (17.7 per cent), and comparable with Gyokeres (27.4 per cent), whom we should remember has been playing in a significantly inferior domestic competition. Hojlund is outperforming his expected goals ratio by 3.85.

“For me he has got every tool in the locker, his endeavour is there, he wants to win, he wants to fight, he wants to score goals, but sometimes it’s as simple as turning your body a different way,” Webber says. “I don’t doubt he’s a very good finisher. If his skills and movement are honed then he has all the tools to get 30 goals a season for Man United.”

Dublin feels United are not giving Hojlund the chances “his work ethic really deserves”. “I like him and his attitude and I can see him thriving if they can give him the service and get the crosses in,” he said. “I don’t think he’s going to be a 35-goal-a-season man, but he is a good finisher and they have to give him that opportunity to show it.”