By OkayGoal
It’s been a genuinely strange few days at Manchester United. A humiliating loss to Hull City in the opening game of the Premier League has been followed by excitement among the reds supporters given the links to Carlos Baleba.
But with the Brighton man being expected at M16, Which makes this the perfect moment to actually ask the question properly: does Carlos Baleba fix United’s biggest problems?
Before working that out, it’s worth being honest about what those problems actually were across the last two games. And that is where three really stand out.
The three problems Carlos Baleba is walking into
The first is temperament in possession. United simply weren’t picking the right moment to play the right pass. Yes, you want to go forward in football, but you also need the discipline to recognise when to just keep the ball moving sideways and stay patient.
The second is mobility and intensity in midfield. Youri Tielemans and Andrey Santos as a pairing haven’t worked across the first two games because they can’t keep up with the pace of the game often enough.
And the third is duelling. Against Hull, United were physically overpowered, and it showed. United were played off the park.
United’s possession problem, and where it really starts
United had 72% of the ball vs Hull and yet at no point did it feel like a team that were actually in control. Technically it was a really poor performance from the visitors in the midweek. We saw too many players failing to make simple passes and then choosing the wrong moment on the ball, produced bad touches, even slipped. United never looked settled.
Having the ball is not the same as doing anything useful with it and this problem starts right at the back from goal kicks specifically. Football moves at a hundred miles an hour, but a goal kick is one of the rare moments where the game actually stops. It’s a reset. And at the weekend, United’s answer in that reset moment was simply to go long, feeding straight into the same chaotic game state that followed.
What’s needed instead is confidence to build from the back but that requires players who’ll take responsibility on the ball.
Tielemans and Santos are both excellent under pressure and good passers, but they’re not players who turn out of trouble when the opposition go man-to-man. That’s exactly where Carlos Baleba helps. He won’t shy away from a first-phase challenge. He’ll take the ball under pressure, take responsibility, and more often than not come out the other side of it successfully, taking his man on and driving forward.
He should help a little higher up the pitch too, given how well he plays in tight spaces. He isn’t a true six in the traditional sense, more of an eight who operates between the lines, inside the opposition’s own structure, which is exactly what United were missing centrally against Hull. Someone who can take it on the back foot, shift it either way, and then accelerate. That drive is the thing, once Baleba gets going, you’re not catching him.
But he doesn’t fix this problem completely. He’s still a little raw technically, and his decision-making on the ball can be loose, his dispossession numbers last season back that up. He’ll help in possession, he’ll take the ball under pressure and receive it in tight areas, but he doesn’t solve the temperament issue at the root.
There’ll still be moments this season where United lose the ball carelessly simply because of the profiles in this squad, which means United are going to have to defend large spaces at times. And that leads straight into problem two.
Mobility and intensity, the area Baleba solves outright
When you build a team that wants to move the ball quickly but can’t recover quickly once it’s lost, something doesn’t add up, and that’s exactly the contradiction Tielemans and Santos create right now. Neither hit particularly high top speeds against Hull, Santos at 27.8km/h, Tielemans at 28.4km/h. Nothing that suggests they can recover ground and get back ball-side in a hurry.
Baleba’s top speed in the Premier League last season was 34.3km/h. That’s an entirely different level of recovery pace.
If United can’t fully solve the problem at source (controlling the ball) then the next best thing is having players who can be quick enough in midfield to recover once it’s gone. Bruno Fernandes will keep taking risks in possession, and he should, but sometimes those risks mean losing the ball unprepared. Baleba, athletically, is a bit of a freak. He’ll cover the space that opens up when that happens, and last season for Brighton he was genuinely excellent at getting across to shut down the wide zones too, something United really struggled with against Hull.
Michael Carrick has been steadily rebuilding this midfield all summer, and mobility is clearly the piece that’s been missing. Baleba doesn’t completely fix the possession problem, but he absolutely solves this one.
Duelling capacity: the problem Baleba might solve best of all
At the weekend, United simply didn’t compete the way they needed to. You have to earn the right to prove you’re the bigger, better team, and United didn’t earn it. In the first half alone, United won just 17 duels to Hull’s 29. That is not good enough. Take Tielemans and Santos as the central pairing and the numbers get worse still, one tackle between the two of them, and only two aerial duels won across the entire midfield.
Not every midfielder needs to be a bruising destroyer, but it’s certainly useful to have one in the building who can put out fires. Baleba fits that description well. He’s got the engine already covered, so he can arrive into more tackling situations in the first place. His numbers last season show a high-volume duelling profile, lots of tackles, lots of interceptions, constantly busy without the ball. He’s also one of the strongest aerial midfielders in the league, which matters enormously against a team like Hull, who built the whole game around long balls and second-ball battles that United simply lost.
Crucially, Baleba won’t shy away from contact. He’s not a player who leaves a foot dangling or lets someone brush past him, he’ll actually hit someone, and he’s strong enough to make it count. There have been too many matches recently, Newcastle away being the obvious example, where United have lost every fifty-fifty in midfield. That needs to change, and Baleba genuinely looks built for exactly that.
So does Carlos Baleba actually fix Manchester United?
Think of the three problems as a sequence. United lose the ball because of the possession temperament issue. Losing the ball means needing mobility and intensity to cover the space that opens up. And once you’re covering that space, you need to win the duels once you get there.
Baleba helps with the first, taking risks bravely in that first phase and working well in tight areas, but his own occasional carelessness means he doesn’t stop that problem at the source entirely.
Mobility and intensity, though, that’s exactly what he’s about. There’s no doubt in that regard. Drop him into this midfield and he covers ground faster than anyone else United currently have. And on duelling, low centre of gravity, genuinely strong, more than capable of winning the physical battles that have been costing United matches. United’s summer rebuild has been about fixing exactly these kinds of gaps, and Baleba doesn’t fix the problem right at its source, but he absolutely fixes it further down the line, and after the last ten days, that’s still very much worth having.
🚨Carlos Baleba will wear the No.20 shirt for Manchester United!
[@SamC_reports] pic.twitter.com/NDSIo3vQjv
— The United Stand (@UnitedStandMUFC) August 24, 2026