Manchester United's Derby Dilemma: Should Sesko Start Against City?
Manchester United will face far fiercer examinations of their Champions League ambitions than this. Sabah FK were out of their depth at Old Trafford, and it showed from the first whistle.
They may end up as the softest touch of United’s eight league-stage opponents. That doesn’t mean the night was meaningless. For Michael Carrick, it delivered one loud, unavoidable message.
United are simply a better team when Benjamin Sesko starts.
Sesko changes the picture
This was Sesko’s first start since the Liverpool game last March, the afternoon he finally stopped trying to grit his teeth through a shin problem that had dogged him for weeks. United had hoped he would be ready for the start of the Premier League season. He wasn’t. Hull away on the opening day brought only a second-half cameo. The same story followed against Ipswich and Everton.
Sabah were not so fortunate.
Given a start at last, the 23-year-old Slovenian transformed the feel of United’s attack. At 6ft 5in, he brings a physical edge no other striker in Carrick’s squad can match. He pins defenders. He occupies them. He forces them to turn and run.
Amad Diallo’s absence has already stripped Carrick of the option he used in pre-season, with Bryan Mbeumo leading the line. Matheus Cunha has stepped into that role at times and has quality, but he plays it his own way. The Brazilian loves to drift, to drop off the front, to find pockets of space. When he does, the tip of United’s attack can look strangely empty.
Sesko is the opposite. He stays high. He stretches teams. He runs at defenders, not away from them. And crucially, he finishes.
At Everton, his size and timing produced a close-range header that should have been the winner before Ainsley Maitland-Niles ripped up the script with a late thunderbolt. Against Sabah, Sesko again looked like the man most likely to decide things.
First came the warning: an audacious back-flick in the first half that almost caught the visitors cold. Then came the goal.
Mbeumo slid him clear, Sesko burst beyond a retreating defence and saw goalkeeper Stas Pokatilov charging out. One touch took the ball past him, the next rolled it into an empty net. Calm. Clinical. Exactly what United have missed.
“Of course, I'm happy with my goal,” Sesko told TNT. “I saw him rushing out, and it was a great opportunity to take the ball away from him and make the goal a little bit easier.”
The point for Carrick is not that Mbeumo or Cunha are incapable of that kind of finish. It is that Sesko offers it on top of a bruising, old-fashioned centre-forward presence.
Football has long mocked the phrase “good touch for a big man”. The reality is that players who marry height, strength, technique and pace are gold dust.
“He definitely offers a different kind of threat,” Carrick said. “That's the beauty of it, really. We know what Ben gives us. There's not many around that kind of give you what Ben does in terms of his physique, his physicality, playing on the last line and his speed to run in behind. He's a real threat.
“It's great to have him back at this level after working to get his fitness back. A couple of goals and good performances, and good minutes in him. I'm really pleased with the way he's gone.”
A derby dilemma
That praise leads to an obvious conclusion and a serious decision.
Manchester City arrive at Old Trafford on Sunday. Carrick now has to decide whether to trust Sesko’s fitness in a game of that magnitude or turn back to Cunha, with no sign yet that Amad is close to returning.
On this evidence, Sesko has earned his place. If Carrick agrees, the next question is what happens on the left.
Cunha opened the scoring against Sabah and has shown he can influence games. Marcus Rashford, though, did not even get on the pitch. The England international is still searching for his first goal or assist since returning from his loan at Barcelona. Yet despite that barren return, he has consistently been United’s most direct outlet, driving at defenders with pace and intent.
Cunha, by contrast, often drifts into the same spaces as Bruno Fernandes. It can look pretty, but it can also crowd United’s most important creator. Carrick may decide that the structure of his team simply breathes better with Rashford stretching the left flank and Fernandes pulling strings inside.
If he has already reached that conclusion, he was not giving anything away on a night when his captain also found the net.
“It's not an easy decision, of course it's not,” Carrick said of his attacking options. “But it's definitely one I'd prefer: to have goals in the team and for the boys to be playing well.
“The understanding they all have is that sometimes it's going to be a start, sometimes it's going to be finishing the game. We need that within the group, from game to game over the season, to be able to call upon slightly different kind of things at different times.
“It's fantastic they're all in good form and started so well.”
Sabah FK will not define United’s season. Manchester City might. And as the derby looms, one question hangs over Old Trafford: can Carrick really afford to leave his 6ft 5in game-changer out?
