Manchester United manager Michael Carrick is navigating a challenging injury landscape as the club prepares for the new Premier League season, with key players Benjamin Sesko, Matthijs de Ligt, Mason Mount, and Luke Shaw all facing fitness concerns. After securing a third-place finish last season and a return to the Champions League, United now must manage a squad that has been hit by familiar injury problems during pre-season.
Benjamin Sesko's troublesome shin problem
Benjamin Sesko, who joined United from RB Leipzig for £74million last summer, finished his debut campaign with 12 goals, the last of which came in a 2-1 win over Liverpool that solidified third place. However, the Slovenia international suffered a nasty fall down the Old Trafford slope after a shove from Ibrahima Konate and did not feature for the rest of the season. He has not played since, missing all of United's pre-season matches.
Sesko has returned to training with the squad and traveled to Dublin for the friendly against Leeds, but he has no minutes under his belt. Stephen Smith, CEO and founder of Kitman Labs, which specializes in injury welfare and performance analytics, told Metro that shin problems are challenging. 'Things like bone stress reaction or irritation of the outside of the bone are generally painful and slow to heal,' Smith said. 'Once he aggravated that [against Liverpool], the healing clock reset.'
Smith highlighted the risk of recurrence: 'Recurrence risk for injuries like that is very real. Bone stress injuries that aren't given enough time in recovery… it is well documented that they have the tendency to re-present and re-present more seriously as stress fractures. So the schedule with him is cautious.'
Match fitness and match sharpness are distinct challenges, Smith noted. 'Returning just before the season opens with no preseason matches is not ideal but it is manageable if he has been doing significant conditioning work in the background and the bone has healed rather than just being symptom free,' he said. 'The summer is a double-edged sword. He needs the rest to recover but they also need to progressively load things to be ready for the season. So the shin can be healed but you need to be fit enough to cope with the demands of the game to ensure something else doesn't happen. It is a balance they must manage.'
When will we see Matthijs de Ligt again?
Matthijs de Ligt was ever-present in United's starting XI before he sat out the win over Crystal Palace last November. Former manager Ruben Amorim optimistically predicted, 'For Matta, it is a small thing. I expect to have Matthijs [back] next game.' However, the Netherlands international has not played since, with radio silence over his fitness for much of the campaign. In May, it was confirmed he had undergone back surgery, and he only returned to first-team training this week.
Smith expects a cautious approach: 'They are not going to suddenly accelerate things at this stage. It has been a very conservative approach. I wouldn't expect to see him back out in the first four to six weeks of the season. We might be looking at somewhere around the eight week mark.' Smith added, 'From what the club have said and shared, it sounds like he has only started to do light, individual stuff right now. Think of the amount of work that will need to go in to get his conditioning base back. He will need his own pre-season and that will come after he comes to the point where the club think he is ready for that. I think we are looking at the 6-12 week window where we expect to see him. It is an issue that was more serious than everyone expected so they will continue to exercise caution.'
Can United keep Mason Mount and Luke Shaw fit?
Luke Shaw started every Premier League match last season, benefitting from a lighter schedule with no European football. However, United's ongoing search for another left-back highlights their need for cover and eventual replacement for the 31-year-old, whose injury history is well-documented. Mason Mount started just 13 matches last season despite the lighter schedule, and he shone during pre-season before picking up an injury in the draw with Paris Saint-Germain that has left him a doubt for the trip to Hull City on Saturday.
Smith emphasized the challenge for players like Mount: 'For someone like him, it is a genuine challenge when you have two or three games a week. The answer is based around data-driven load management and how they recover in between fixtures and a willingness to make the call to rest him even when he is available.' Smith added, 'Carrick will be careful. The risk of him and other players like him with high intensity fixture schedules is accumulative load. It is not one individual session that breaks them down, it's the number of training sessions they get through in addition to playing two or three times a week. That's a significant toll on anybody, but someone who has a history like that and has proven they cannot tolerate it all that well, that's going to a significant challenge.'
Smith noted that Shaw's full season was a success, but with the caveat that it was one game a week. United's league opener against Hull City on Saturday will test the squad's readiness as Carrick manages these injury concerns.
