Will Carlos Baleba fix Manchester United? Three big questions ahead of potential debut

As the Premier League returns, we dive into the signing who could boost United’s midfield, or confuse things further

C arlos Baleba cost Manchester United $88.7m (£65m) plus $6.8m (£5m) in add-ons when they signed him from Brighton in August. He may be worth even more now despite the fact that the Cameroonian has yet to debut for his new club. Many United fans are counting on Baleba to be a one-man solution to their early-season problems. No pressure.

An ankle injury kept Baleba on the sidelines as Michael Carrick’s side struggled against Everton, Manchester City and Fulham. The 22-year-old joined United just a few days after the opening-weekend defeat to Hull City, so he’d already had a preview of his new team’s troubles to come. The scale of Baleba’s task has grown since then.

United will return to action against Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday and Baleba could feature. What sort of impact can fans expect? Will everything click into place with him finally in the lineup? Or could Baleba’s introduction confuse things further?

United spent the best part of $200m (£150m) revamping their midfield in the summer transfer window. Andrey Santos joined from Chelsea before Youri Tielemans left Aston Villa to make the move north. Baleba’s capture from Brighton represented the final component of a long-overdue rebuild.

Carrick has used Kobbie Mainoo and Tielemans as a double pivot in United’s last four Premier League outings with mixed results. While Mainoo has impressed, proving to Thomas Tuchel why he might have been wrong to deny him an opportunity at the World Cup for England, Tielemans’s performances have been trickier to analyze.

Statistically, the Belgian’s numbers are strong. Only Noussair Mazraoui and Mainoo are averaging more accurate passes per 90 minutes for United this season than Tielemans, who is also covering the most distance per 90 minutes of any United player. And yet the Old Trafford outfit have been far too open in the center of the pitch.

Whether that’s due to Bruno Fernandes’s positioning and the freedom he is given as a No 10, Tielemans’s weakness in defensive transition or something else, Carrick has yet to find the right balance. This is reflected in the sheer chaos of United’s first five league games: they have won just one and conceded eight.

Baleba has presumably been signed by United to give their midfield some legs. He is known for his defensive ability and athleticism as well as his press resistance in possession. “You need the courage to come out with the ball in difficult and risky areas,” Baleba said in a Sky Sports interview.

This instinct should encourage United supporters. The club has lacked a true two-way midfielder for years, stretching all the way back to the latter stage of the Alex Ferguson era. Paul Pogba was signed to be that player, but was largely misunderstood by a string of different managers who failed to recognise his attacking instincts.

It’s not clear how Carrick will fit Baleba into his new-look midfield considering Mainoo is in the best form of his career and Santos and Tielemans surely joined United on the promise they would be key figures. Dropping Tielemans in particular could further weaken United’s ability on the ball.

Last season, Baleba ranked seventh among his Brighton teammates for accurate passes per 90 minutes. He ranked 16th for big chances created. Some of this was linked to Baleba’s general struggle for form and fitness, but United haven’t exactly signed a natural creator.

Baleba was included in a matchday squad for the first time away to Fulham on 20 September before the international break and played his first minutes in a behind-closed-doors friendly match last week. He could feature against Spurs this weekend, most likely from the bench given his lack of match sharpness.

Spurs have suffered their own midfield issues this season. Roberto De Zerbi is grappling with many of the same problems Carrick is experiencing and so there could be scope for United to control the center of the pitch, especially with Saturday’s match being at Old Trafford.

On the flip side, if Carrick gets the balance of his midfield wrong or introduces Baleba to the lineup before he’s ready it could prove costly. The United manager is under pressure to prove he can point his team in the right direction again. Another underwhelming result could have Carrick fighting for his job.

If United fans expect Baleba to single-handedly fix their team, they could be disappointed by what the Cameroonian is able to offer. There’s only so much one player can do when Carrick is fighting against years of poor recruitment and boardroom mismanagement. At long last, though, United may finally get to see exactly what they paid all that money for.