Just watched Match of the Day, and have seen the travails of Hojlund. On twitter there were the usual “he just needs one to go in and he’ll be away” sort of posts.
But it got me thinking, what examples are there of players that struggled at first, but went on to be really important and effective strikers? Obviously, youth team players that came through the ranks don’t count. Really just big signings at big clubs.
Thierry Henry. It was a big concern early but once the lamp was lit he didn’t stop, and as we all know he went on to have a legendary career.
Dzeko at Roma, was missing every imaginable tap in, then went on to be top scorer following season
From what I recall, Didier Drogba had a slow start in his first season and went in to become a Bridge Legend.
Luis Suarez. Took a while to settle in England and then exploded
Torres at Liverpool.
Ibrahimovic took a long time to get going at Ajax and was regarded as a quite poor finisher
Berbatov looked useless when he arrived at spurs first few months
Henrik Larsson passed the ball straight to an opponent on his Celtic debut, leading directly to the winning goal. Over the course of that season, he scored 19 goals in 46 appearances.
He went on to score 223 goals in 267 appearances over the following 6 seasons.
Took Theirry Henry 7 or 8 games to score his first goal for Arsenal
Hojlund has 5 goals in the CL and is joint top scorer in that competition so far. Struggling? No.
Højlund is already scoring at 1 in 3. Not world beater rate but not sure it counts as a struggle.
Gonzalo Higuain only scored 11 in his first 2 seasons at Real, but of course there’s a significant mitigating factor wearing the number 7 shirt scoring all the goals for them.
Sergio Agüero meanwhile only scored 7 goals in all competitions in his first season at Atlético before exploding the next year and not relenting until he left Citt
Gonzalo Higuain only scored 11 in his first 2 seasons at Real, but of course there’s a significant mitigating factor wearing the number 7 shirt scoring all the goals for them.
Tbf Higuain was more of a winger or shadow striker than an actual one at the time. He was also 20.
Also iirc Van Nisterloy was scoring more than Raul at the time.
Scoring fewer than RVN is not exactly damning, the guy was a goal machine
Yeah obviously, it was just my answer to
but of course there’s a significant mitigating factor wearing the number 7 shirt scoring all the goals for them
But the guy clarified that he got confused and thought Ronaldo was playing then, while I thought he meant Raul was scoring all the goals, which wasn’t the case.
Higuain was youngster first two seasons. He was 18 or 19 when he came to Madrid, and Ronaldo didn’t even play there at the time.
He was a regular starter those 18 months, he’d only played about 10 fewer games when joining Real than Højlund had when joining Man Utd. €12million was a decent chunk of change too - he wasn’t a “youngster” he was signed for the first team and almost immediately started playing for them, replacing original Ronaldo
Vardy. The season before they won the league he was easily the worst starting striker in the Prem
Diego Forlan
Diego Forlan. Took ~20 games to get his first goal for United, later in his career he won multiple European Golden Shoes
Salah