Manchester United Faces Crisis as Sesko Injury Deepens Challenges

Manchester United’s season has barely started and already their biggest gamble is under heavy fire.

Benjamin Sesko, the £74 million summer signing from Leipzig, is sidelined again with a leg problem, and two of the club’s most decorated midfielders, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt, are openly questioning both the situation and the squad planning that led to it.

Sesko arrived in 2025 as the new focal point of United’s attack, a marquee investment meant to spearhead Michael Carrick’s rebuild. Instead, he missed the entire pre-season with the same leg issue he first suffered last campaign after a kick during the win over Liverpool in May.

Carrick eased him back carefully. Sesko 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 Premier League matches. Then, without warning, he vanished from the squad.

On Sunday at Craven Cottage, as United scraped a 1-1 draw with Fulham, Sesko was nowhere to be seen. He did not travel to London, and Carrick could offer no clarity on how serious the injury is. Tests this week will dictate the club’s next steps, but the timing could hardly be worse.

United chose not to sign another orthodox centre-forward in the summer window. That decision now hangs over them. With Sesko out, Joshua Zirkzee – nine goals in 77 appearances – is the only recognised striker left to carry the burden up front.

On the latest episode of “The Good, the Bad and the Football”, Butt did not hide his frustration at that call.

“The back four is a big problem,” he said, as quoted by the English newspaper Metro, “but for me, the bigger problem is the number 9. How can Manchester United have only one striker? Who is injured, and with what injury, is it a leg injury?”

The conversation quickly turned from recruitment to resilience. Scholes, never one to sugar-coat, cut in with a barbed quip: “How do you get injured in your leg? Isn’t that a broken leg? Can’t you just wear shin pads?”

Butt pushed the point even harder. “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.”

Their words tap into a growing unease. United’s start to the season has already been labelled disastrous inside the club, and losing their flagship striker to an undefined leg issue only sharpens the sense of chaos. A fragile defence, a thin attack, and now a mystery injury to the man signed to change everything.

The medical reports will arrive soon enough. The bigger question is whether United’s bold decision to go into a long, unforgiving season with just one out-and-out striker has already come back to haunt them.