Yes

But we only have one top class CB, our best DM and part of our ideal midfield (Phillips, Rice, Bellingham) never plays for his club and we have no depth in any central positions - just plenty of full backs and wide forwards.

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

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

1. He signed for an absolute shambles of a club: He’s a LW suited to a style of possession and short passing who we signed as a RW in a counter-attacking team.

Then we signed the roaming statue formerly known as Cristiano Ronaldo in the same window which meant we weren’t a counter-attacking team either and suddenly at RW he was competing with the homegrown breakout prospect Greenwood, and at LW Rashford, Pogba, Martial, and Ronaldo’s tendency to drift out wide leaving the team without a striker to try and assist.

Oh and until August 2022 we didn’t actually have a functioning midfield to even get the ball to the attackers. Still don’t really. Also for half of that season one of his attacking partners was Wout Weghorst.

2. He’s clearly not the model professional those two seem to be. His natural talent allowed him to stand out early, but the timekeeping etc has caught up and without a personality transplant he’ll never hit the heights of those two. Without point 1 he would be a lot closer though