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Manchester United Players

Do We Need a New Forward?

Manchester United were, during the summer, said to be a team with endless attacking options. However an injury to our best striker Wayne Rooney (expected to keep him out of action for at least two months) and also our best player of late, Ronaldo, receiving a 3 match suspension for an attempted head butt has left our attacking options looking a bit slim. It has also been brought to my attention that Ryan Giggs has not been performing to his best and there have been calls by many supporters to drop him, though I doubt 2 poor performances will prompt SAF to not play him against City. Also Scholes hasn’t been himself either lately. Oh, and where are Owen Hargreaves and Anderson??? I mean honestly, they have been included in both squads that played against Reading and Portsmouth but neither even made the bench!!!

We are now left with Carlos Tevez, who impressed on his debut, as our only fully fit striker as injury prone Saha and Ole are still recovering from their latest set backs. With no Rooney or Ronaldo due to injury and suspension respectively, Scholes and Giggs not performing to a standard that pleases us Reds fans and Anderson and Hargreaves yet to feature, we have started playing O’Shea upfront! Nani isn’t able to win a match single handed yet and Carrick needs to be picking out our forwards better than he currently is. Even though we already have over 40 attempts on goal in total, we haven’t really created many clear cut chances and more worryingly only scored 1 goal. 🙁

Many say we never replaced Ruud and they are correct. With Ruud we had a striker who would be getting us around 30 goals a season and if the wingers put a decent ball in you could bet your house Ruud would be there to finish it off. We didn’t replace Ruud but instead we changed our style of play to a more free flowing style that allows the goals to be shared around more equally, no one was complaining last season when we were banging in the goals. And now SAF says he is going to play Rooney in a more advanced role, if so he is more than capable of getting 30 or so goals per season. Anyway, now that we have sold both Rossi and Smith and have 3 of our 4 remaining strikers injured we might have to go back into the transfer market to get another striker.

But who could we get? There were rumours linking us with the likes of Samuel Eto’o and Huntelaar but they would be very pricey and were alternatives to Tevez. What we need (if we are going to get a striker) is a forward who can get goals, comes cheap and would be content with a place on the bench when Rooney is fit again. So who are the options? Anelka? Gudjohnsen (but I think he is injured as well) ? That Sampdoria guy Quagaliarella?

I personally wouldn’t like Anelka at United as I think he doesn’t have the right attitude to play for us. Gudjohnson wouldn’t be a bad choice but I think he is still recovering from an injury, and Quagaliarella is young and would also be content with a place on the bench, so he isn’t a bad choice either. But I think the best option would be to get someone on loan until January, like we did with Larsson last year.

So what do you guys think? Who should we get? Do we even need someone?