Schmeichel says Manchester United have lost 25-goal striker | OneFootball

Peter Schmeichel believes former club Manchester United have lost a ’25-goals-a-year striker’ in Rasmus Hojlund.

Hojlund was allowed to leave Manchester United in the summer after a challenging period at Old Trafford, with the Denmark international joining Napoli on loan with an obligation to make the move permanent.

The 22-year-old has started his time in Italy superbly, with four goals in six appearances for the Italian champions. He continued that form into the international break, with three goals in two games for the national team.

Schmeichel has questioned the decision to let his compatriot leave, after Hojlund was ‘starved of service’ during his two seasons at Old Trafford.

He believes Hojlund would have thrived with the improved service from summer signings Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo, and insists the £72m spent on Benjamin Sesko should have been invested in other areas of the squad.

“At United you’ve got a head coach [Ruben Amorim], then you had a director of football [Dan Ashworth], a technical director or whatever Jason Wilcox’s title is, and you’ve got a head of recruitment [Christopher Vivell], who is very powerful,” he told BBC podcast Sacked in the Morning.

“You’ve got a lot of people deciding on who is coming in.

“For instance, the signing of Benjamin Sesko was a little bit weird to me because we have Rasmus Hojlund, who has been starved of service for two years.

“You only have to see what he’s doing at Napoli with Kevin de Bruyne and Scott McTominay to play with – he’s scoring goals.

“I’ve consistently said this for two and a half years – Rasmus Hojlund will be a 25-goals-a-year striker for Manchester United, but he needs service.

“We let him go on the stats that he scored very little goals last season and bring Sesko in at the time we bring in Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbuemo, who would give Hojlund first-class service.

“You spend £70m-plus on Sesko, when we don’t have the number six we should have, and there’s the goalkeeping position as well.

“This season alone we’ve conceded nine goals from goalkeeping errors. When I played, when Edwin van der Sar played, when David de Gea played, the brief was win 10 points a season, you don’t give points away.

“Why did we bring someone in that we didn’t need? Because the head of recruitment comes from Leipzig [also Sesko’s former club] and he’s got to make a mark.

“When I played, the manager [Sir Alex Ferguson] was in charge. He said ‘him in and him out’. Now it’s different people with different agendas that decide. How can you create a stable environment to have a football team that can go out and win every game?”

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