There is hope for Michael Carrick, if only he can see it. Benjamin Sesko is fire, and could light the way after Manchester United blew the softest start to the season of any Premier League team.
Sesko’s crashing 89th-minute header would have won the game for any self-respecting title contender. But this is Carrick’s United, the achingly-slow pursuit of the perfect pass for no apparent reason.
Sesko had been on the pitch barely 20 minutes and fashioned the kind of goal too rarely seen in this geometric era of endlessly-recycled possession and wingers who cut inside.
Ignoring the convention, overlapping left-footer Luke Shaw hit the byline to float a cross into the box. Sesko threw himself at it, leaving Jordan Pickford trying to pluck a fish from the air.
Sesko’s reaction said it all. It screamed winner, as in the character of the man if not the match. It should have been both, but under Carrick, United are constantly stuck between gears, and none of them fast.
Sesko’s own burn has been slow since his arrival a year ago as part of United’s attacking rebuild. He cut a self-conscious figure then, as if telling himself he wasn’t quite ready for the mission. Thus was his first season a cameo campaign peppered by episodic flares.
A calf injury in May delayed his start this term. Yet 20 minutes of Sesko on Merseyside, where he scored the only goal of the game from the bench last season, was enough to show what United might become were they to feed the machine with more urgency.
Sesko is Erling Haaland waiting to happen, a monstrous 6ft 5in and fast as a 100m sprinter. In possession he keeps it simple, gathers the ball, passes it on, makes his run. He hits the box like a 1950s centre-forward, all pace, power and Tommy Taylor vibes.
Everton’s James Tarkowski, who is not a small man and loves a battle, was utterly decommissioned by Sesko’s rampant presence. Sesko started the move, collecting a loose ball in the centre circle, turning quickly, shifting it then sprinting onto the shoulder of Tarkowsi, who would have sensed the long-striding menace, but could do nothing about it.
That should have been that, of course. Though a lot still had to go right for Everton to equalise a second time, bounce of the ball etc, no matter the purity of Ainsley Maitland-Niles’ rocket, it wouldn’t have mattered were United built to score and not just keep the ball.
What a mess. Four points from Hull City, Ipswich Town and Everton and the bank of Abu Dhabi up next in an ominous echo of the last time Manchester City arrived at Old Trafford. That was Carrick’s first game following the sacking of Ruben Amorim.
With his free pass in hand caretaker Carrick ambushed City, as he would Arsenal at the Emirates in his very next engagement.
Two from two. Here we go. Carrick rode that wave all the way to third, a tall impassive figure looking on from the touchline as if it were all meant to be.
The quasi-mysteriousness of Carrick’s dark-suited presence took the football directorship along with it, his position made permanent with qualification for the Champions League.
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There was no sense then that Carrick’s first fixture as a Champions League coach might be suffused with doubts about him. United’s inability to keep clean sheets is a feature compounded by his side’s soft edges and inability to kill teams off, which leaves them eternally vulnerable to late goals borne of balls raining in the box.
Not a single shot on target in the 40 minutes between Bryan Mbeumo’s opener and Sesko’s header. Despite the obvious excellence of Kobbie Mainoo and the steady improvement of Youri Tielemans, United struggle to create when Bruno Fernandes is not quite Bruno Fernandes, which was the case at Hull and Everton.
It is that failure to get after teams when ahead that contributes to the defensive panic and poor decision-making in the closing minutes. The fix is there. It is called Benjamin Sesko and the time is now.