Manchester United Faces Fresh Sesko Injury Setback
Manchester United’s season took another unwelcome twist with fresh doubts over Benjamin Sesko’s fitness – and two club greats are openly questioning how the situation has been allowed to develop.
Sesko, a £74 million signing from Leipzig in the summer of 2025, arrived as the headline striker addition. He has barely got going. A leg problem that first surfaced last season wiped out his entire pre-season, and the same issue has now dragged into the campaign just as United’s attack already looks threadbare.
The Slovenian picked up the injury after a kick to his leg in the win over Liverpool back in May. Since then, his involvement has been stop–start at best. He started in the Champions League against Sabah, led the line in the Carabao Cup defeat to Brighton and came off the bench in each of United’s first four league games.
Then, without warning, he vanished from the squad.
Sesko did not travel to London for Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Fulham at Craven Cottage, a match where United laboured and scraped a point. Manager Michael Carrick offered no real clarity on the severity of the problem afterwards, leaving supporters and pundits guessing. Tests scheduled this week are expected to shape the club’s treatment plan and timeline.
For a side already enduring a disastrous start to the season, the uncertainty around their marquee forward feels like another heavy blow.
“How can Manchester United have only one striker?”
On the latest episode of “The Good, the Bad and the Football”, former United midfielders Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes did not hide their frustration – not just with Sesko’s situation, but with the club’s planning.
United opted against signing another out-and-out striker in the summer window. That decision left Joshua Zirkzee, with nine goals in 77 matches, as the only recognised alternative through the middle. It is a gamble that already looks reckless.
“The back four is a big problem, but for me, the bigger problem is the number 9,” Butt said, quoted by English newspaper Metro. “How can Manchester United have only one striker? Who is injured, and with what injury, is it a leg injury?”
Scholes, never shy of a sharp line, cut in with a pointed quip about Sesko’s latest setback.
“How do you get injured in your leg? Isn’t that a broken leg? Can’t you just wear shin pads?” he replied.
Butt doubled down on that old-school view of playing through pain.
“Either you break your leg, or you play. Wear shin pads or padding, I don’t quite understand it. It’s hard to discuss without knowing what it is,” he added.
Carrick in the dark, United on edge
Carrick’s inability to offer a concrete update only deepens the sense of unease. Without a clear diagnosis, United are left juggling a misfiring attack and a star striker whose availability is a mystery.
Sesko was signed to be the focal point of a new forward line. Instead, United are staring at a season where their only fit central striker is still trying to prove he belongs at this level, and their big-money signing is already the subject of public doubt from two of the club’s most decorated midfielders.
The tests this week will tell United what they are dealing with medically.
The bigger question is whether the club can afford for the answer to be anything other than good news.
