Man Utd injury dossier: Benjamin Sesko risk and Matthijs de Ligt return date | Football

Michael Carrick did what was asked of him in getting Manchester United back into the Champions League last season. The job is now to take the next step.

United had among the lightest schedules in the Premier League last season with no European football on offer and did what was largely expected of them in securing third place.

A rebuild in midfield began with Casemiro departing and after missing out on Elliot Anderson and Mateus Fernandes, Andrey Santos and Youri Tielemans arrived. Carlos Baleba could join them but should that deal go through at Old Trafford, he will do so with an injury that will sideline him until September.

There were familiar injury problems for certain players last season with Matthijs de Ligt and Benjamin Sesko not involved in pre-season ahead of their league opener against Hull City on Saturday. So who is ready for the battle ahead?

Benjamin Sesko’s troublesome shin problem

Following his £74million arrival from RB Leipzig last summer, Sesko finished his maiden campaign in Manchester with a respectable haul of 12 goals – the last of which coming in the 2-1 win over Liverpool that saw United tighten their grip on third spot.

The Slovenia international took a nasty tumble down the infamous Old Trafford slope after a shove from Ibrahima Konate and did not feature for the rest of the season. While there was no suggestion it was a serious issue at the time, Sesko has not played since, missing every one of United’s pre-season matches.

Sesko travelled with the squad to Dublin for the friendly game against Leeds, training with the squad since. But with no minutes under his belt, it remains to be seen what role he will have to play in the opening weeks of the new season.

Stephen Smith, CEO and founder of Kitman Labs which specialises in injury welfare and performance analytics, explains shin problems can be challenging at the best of times. One concern at the forefront of United’s mind will be the risk of recurrence which was likely to have been a factor in his lack of pre-season involvement.

‘Things like bone stress reaction or irritation of the outside of the bone are generally painful and slow to heal,’ Smith told Metro. ‘Once he aggravated that [against Liverpool], the healing clock reset.

‘Recurrence risk for injuries like that is very real. Bone stress injuries that aren’t given enough time in recovery… it is well documented that they have the tendency to re-present and re-present more seriously as stress fractures. So the schedule with him is cautious.’

It presents another dilemma. Match fitness and match sharpness are two very different things and with no minutes under his belt, when will Carrick consider him ready to start a game?  

‘Returning just before the season opens with no preseason matches is not ideal but it is manageable if he has been doing significant conditioning work in the background and the bone has healed rather than just being symptom free,’ Smith said.

‘The summer is a double-edged sword. He needs the rest to recover but they also need to progressively load things to be ready for the season. So the shin can be healed but you need to be fit enough to cope with the demands of the game to ensure something else doesn’t happen. It is a balance the must manage.’

When will we see Matthijs de Ligt again?

De Ligt was ever-present in United’s starting XI before he sat out of the win over Crystal Palace last November. ‘For Matta, it is a small thing,’ Ruben Amorim optimistically predicted. ‘I expect to have Matthijs [back] next game.’

The Netherlands international has not played since with radio silence over his fitness for much of the campaign. In May, it was confirmed he had undergone back surgery, making his long-awaited return to first-team training this week. Any involvement in the opening weeks of the season will surely not be on the cards however with the work to get him back to his usual formidable self only just beginning.

‘They are not going to suddenly accelerate things at this stage,’ Smith said. ‘It has been a very conservative approach. I wouldn’t expect to see him back out in the first four to six weeks of the season. We might be looking at somewhere around the eight week mark.

‘From what the club have said and shared, it sounds like he has only started to do light, individual stuff right now. Think of the amount of work that will need to go in to get his conditioning base back. He will need his own pre-season and that will come after he comes to the point where the club think he is ready for that. I think we are looking at the 6-12 week window where we expect to see him. It is an issue that was more serious than everyone expected so they will continue to exercise caution.’

Can United keep Mason Mount and Luke Shaw fit?

Shaw started every one of United’s Premier League matches this season, benefitting from the lighter schedule. But United’s ongoing search for another left-back illustrates their need for cover and eventually replacing the 31-year-old whose injury woes over the course of his career have been well-documented.

Mount started just 13 matches last season despite the lighter schedule. As we’ve seen in the past, he shone during the pre-season campaign before picking up an injury in the draw with Paris Saint-Germain that is believed to have left him a doubt for the trip to Hull on Saturday.

‘For someone like him, it is a genuine challenge when you have two or three games a week,’ Smith said. ‘The answer is based around data-driven load management and how they recover in between fixtures and a willingness to make the call to rest him even when he is available.

‘Carrick will be careful. The risk of him and other players like him with high intensity fixture schedules is accumulative load. It is not one individual session that breaks them down, it’s the number of training sessions they get through in addition to playing two or three times a week. That’s a significant toll on anybody, but someone who has a history like that and has proven they cannot tolerate it all that well, that’s going to a significant challenge.

‘Last year was a huge success for Shaw in managing a full season. But the caveat was it was one game a week.’

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