Terminal decline? Ronaldo has scored in only four of his last SIXTEEN games
Carlo Garganese
- Updated: 9 Feb 2022 18:43 GMT
- 3 min read
Most of the headlines surrounding Manchester United in the past 24 hours have been dominated by Cristiano Ronaldo’s terrible scoring run.
The Portuguese superstar has failed to find the back of the net in his past five club games, which is his longest goalless streak in 12 years.
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Indeed, he has not scored in 2022 and his most recent Manchester United goal came against Burnley in the final game of 2021, a match in which he also contributed an assist.
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But Ronaldo’s recent poor form is not just a flash in the pan. If we go further back and review his numbers throughout December and November – for both club and country – we can see that Cristiano has been struggling for over three months now.
How many goals has Ronaldo scored since November?
In the 16 games that followed his Champions League double in Bergamo against Atalanta on November 2, Ronaldo has only found the net in four of these matches.
He scored five goals in that time; away at Villarreal on November 23, a double over Arsenal on December 2, the winner versus Norwich on December 11 and the aforementioned strike past Burnley on December 30.
Two of those five goals were penalties, which means that Ronaldo has scored three times in open play in three months.
He also only delivered two assists during this period, which came against Burnley and Norwich – both in the relegation zone.
Given his status as a supposedly world-class superstar – and the best-paid player in the club on €30 million per year – this is clearly not good enough.
It is one of the reasons why Man Utd manager Ralf Rangnick would have felt the need to drop him for the 1-1 draw with Burnley on Tuesday.
Ronaldo can’t blame this form all on interim manager Rangnick as this poor scoring run came under four different managers; Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Michael Carrick, Rangnick and Portugal coach Fernando Santos.
Cristiano has been written off in the past and proved his doubters wrong but, having turned 37 last week, is his decline now terminal?
