Pressure Mounting on Manchester United's Fearsome Forward Line to Deliver

Like a piece of fine art, Manchester United, by Louis van Gaal, is unfinished. 

He's only had one transfer window to craft a masterpiece fit to follow on from the teams he built in Amsterdam, Barcelona and Munich.

And because of that, there are still holes he needs to fill. Centre-back is the obvious one. Central midfield is another. He can fix it in January if the right players are available, otherwise he'll have to wait until the end of the season.

But the one area of his squad that does feel complete is up front. He inherited Wayne Rooney, Robin van Persie and Juan Mata and added Angel Di Maria and Radamel Falcao. In terms of a group of attacking footballers, it doesn't get much better.

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But with star names comes added expectation. The expectation that, if nothing else, United will score goals this season; the expectation that Di Maria, Falcao, Rooney and Van Persie will be able to blast United into the top four in spite of their shaky defence and threadbare midfield.

Goals can cover a multitude of other problems. Liverpool couldn't defend last season, but that was rarely an issue with Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge banging them in at the other end, and they came within a whisker of winning the title.

There's a theory among some fans that United's only hope this season is to try to outscore everyone else in the way Liverpool did with Suarez and Sturridge. If the forwards can propel Van Gaal's team back into the Champions League at the first attempt, the rest of the problems can be sorted later.

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But for whatever reason, it hasn't happened yet. The defence is still vulnerable and the midfield has, at times, looked flimsy. But the strikers aren't bailing everyone else out. At least not yet.

There have been flashes of flowing attacking football against QPR and Leicester, but they are the only two games this season in which United have scored more than twice.

In the last three games, they scored once against Chelsea and Crystal Palace and failed to find the net at all against Manchester City—albeit while playing with 10 men for more than half the game.

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Van Gaal has assembled a forward line to match the best in the world, meaning money that might have been spent on another defender or an extra midfielder has been used to improve an area of the squad that already looked strong.

The idea was that the added goals would buy Van Gaal a bit of time and help United win games even when they're not defending particularly well. For the time being, however, the one part of Van Gaal's team that's finished isn't living up to its end of the deal.