Staff Takeaways: Leeds United 2-1 Manchester United
Leeds United's Ao Tanaka and Manchester United's Benjamin Sesko during the Premier League match at Old Trafford, Manchester. Picture date: Monday April 13, 2026. (Photo by Martin Rickett/PA Images via Getty Images) | PA Images via Getty Images Pauly: Alarming lack of depth on display There hasn’t been much change in United’s underlying numbers between Ruben Amorim and Michael Carrick this season.
The magical secret to Carrick’s success has mostly been he’s put his best players out on the pitch and used them in their most effective roles. Well, what happens if those players suddenly aren’t available? Monday night against Leeds happens.
Carrick named an unchanged XI in his first two games in charge. Seeing as pretty much everyone was available and those matches were against Manchester City and Arsenal we can deduce that this was his first choice XI. Five of the players from that starting XI were not in the team against Leeds, whether because of injury, suspension, illness, or carrying a knock.
The gap between those five players and their replacements range from pretty substantial to catastrophic . The result was a hodgepodge of players thrown together that didn’t complement each other and couldn’t cover each other’s weaknesses. The absence of Kobbie Mainoo brought in Manuel Ugarte, a player who has no on-ball qualities and isn’t great defensively because he rarely holds his position.
Benjamin Sesko’s game is more suited to coming off the bench. He doesn’t offer you much outside of the box, making it more difficult to advance the ball to the final third. You need to accommodate that in your buildup play, but that’s made more difficult with Ugarte’s lack of ball-playing ability and that Noussair Mazraoui doesn’t do much to support his winger.
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