Manchester United, Sisyphus and the Art of Scoring Goals...

What is a ball if not a smaller boulder?

Apr 09, 2025

I love Greek myth.

The tales of formidable heroes and vengeful gods; the legends of fantastical beasts sandwiched within globe-spanning, epic journeys.

Something from the old Grecian stories that has captured the current zeitgeist, especially in this era of ‘grind culture’, is the story of Sisyphus; a man whose constant cheating of death earned him the fruitless, eternal task of pushing a boulder up a hill that he could never reach the top of (once he had finally passed into the afterlife).

The parable is one based in hubris (as many Greek myths are, the main through-line being don’t p*ss off a god). The task is punishment for Sisyphus’ belief that he could outsmart Zeus and Hades, but it has become a metaphor for consistent, but ultimately pointless struggle.

So you can imagine, it has become a common metaphor when describing Manchester United across the board.

United don’t score many goals, that is an unfortunate fact. After the Manchester Derby, they have now gone 22 games in the Premier League this season without scoring in the first half; only Leicester have a worse record (you can thank Mark Critchley of The Athletic for that horrifying tidbit).

The thing is, United played well against Manchester City. They moved the ball effectively, applied pressure and created a number of chances that should have been goalscoring opportunities. However, as the whistle blew for full time the score was 0-0; the boulder began to roll down the hill once again.

Constant struggle with little results; the perfect comparison to the Greek king right? Well despite my intro to this piece of writing, I don’t think it is for one simple fact…

Manchester United do not shoot enough.

Rasmus Hojlund is the man who owns the number nine shirt at Old Trafford, whether he is considered the club’s main striker or not.

He has 1558 minutes in the Premier League this season, so how many shots do you think he’s taken in that time? And to paraphrase Tom Segura, it’s lower than you think.

Have you made your guess? (I understand that I can’t really hide the answer right below this without completely destroying the formatting of this article).

21 shots. He has taken 21 shots this season1.

To put that into perspective, Diogo Dalot, United’s right back, has taken 23. So has Dwight McNeil, who has only just come back into the Everton team after being injured since December.

Joshua Zirkzee has a slightly better tally with 27 shots in 1339, but when you compare it to the likes of Mo Salah (108), Erling Haaland (102) and even Alexander Isak (75) and there’s clearly an issue.

It’s not quite Sisyphus pushing the boulder up to the top of the hill only for it to roll back down, and more him stretching his hamstrings, putting on his knee support and chalking up his hands, only to decide he actually doesn’t fancy it today.

Now I will admit, some of the issue is down to the quality of United’s chance creation; this article isn’t (fully) a pile-on about Hojlund and Zirkzee and whether they are the right fit going forward.

But I do think that if they are going to be United’s go-to guys at centre forward for the next five years at the very least, there needs to be a mentality shift.

I could write a thesis on the crimes Erik ten Hag committed against my club. Yes he delivered us trophies, but at what cost to the communal spirit?

The Antony deal is not completely his fault but that alone deserves 10,000 words and it’s own documentary. I’ll admit I wasn’t against the deal at first, but our financial reports show the real damage of throwing £85m all in one go at a player Ten Hag didn’t even use properly.

And also he think’s he’s a baller and if that’s the case, we have lost the meaning of phrase Joga Bonit…. I’m sorry it seems that’s a trigger point for me.

All this aside, and it should be noted that on the recruitment side of things the club is also culpable, I think the biggest issue with Ten Hag’s tenure is how timid and shot shy he made the set of players he had at his disposal.

Ten Hag’s ‘philosophy’ at Old Trafford was a confusing one, as he seemed to be stuck between two styles; the high intensity, transition football that United were used to playing and the more meticulous, positional style he had fostered at other clubs.

It ultimately, and you’re probably not surprised by this, didn’t work. However, what it did create is a team that try and create the highest percentage shot possible before they take it.

And this my good reader, is where my gripe truly is with the bald headed Dutchman.

Now the amount of shots you should take is for the most part, a bell curve; there are problems with lying at either end of the spectrum.

As we can see by how Alejandro Garnacho currently plays football, taking too many shots can be a bad thing, especially when they’re low percentage and fired into traffic2.

And in the decade plus of football I’ve seen post Sir Alex Ferguson, I’ve never seen a team more influenced by the crowd shouting ‘Shoot!’ than Manchester United (however even that seems to have dissipated since Ten Hag).

But if we were to debate which is the lesser of the two evils, I would say that taking too many shots is better than taking no shots at all, because ultimately you need to hit the ball in the direction of the net for it to end up in the back of it.

Or as Wayne Gretzky/Michael Scott once said more eloquently - ‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’

There have been a number of opportunities this season where Hojlund could and should have shot earlier - his chance in the 1-1 against Arsenal comes to mind, where he takes too long trying to let the ball settle and allows his defender to recover.

Yes, in theory you want your shot to have a better chance of going in, but xG (as the kids call it) only exists when a shot is taken. Otherwise the probability of a goal, will always be zero.

And now United are suffering because no one wants to just hit it unless their name is Bruno Fernandes.

I know that killer instinct I and many other fans are looking for is in there somewhere in Hojlund, or at least I hope it still is.

I’ve seen it while he was at Atalanta and playing for Denmark, and also during his early days in a United shirt, but it has been buried overtime and now he is a shadow of the what the club hoped he would be.

Zirkzee has more at his disposal and I can see him thriving as one of the 10s going forward. In fact, I annoyingly said this very early on and was going to write something about it but then work got in the way, so just know I was right even if there’s no proof.

The Art of Scoring Goals is a difficult one, if it was easy then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But as someone who’s never played the game professionally, I know that at least the first step is simple - You’ve got to shoot to score.

United need someone upfront who not only understands this, but lives and breathes it every time they’re on the pitch.

And if they don’t have that sort of player leading the line, that boulder is going to remain sat at the bottom of the hill and we’ll never see if anyone can actually get it to the top.

Played on Paper

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