Manchester United's new £200m attack: How Benjamin Sesko fits with Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo

New York Times

5 days ago

Good things come in threes — or at least Ruben Amorim will be hoping so.
The Manchester United head coach is set to completely refresh his forward line with the addition of three exciting new attacking options. Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo joined earlier in the window and now the club have agreed a deal with RB Leipzig for centre-forward Benjamin Sesko that will take their spending on a new attack past £200m ($268m).
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It's a tantalising prospect for United fans. While their defence was found sorely wanting last season, shipping 54 goals, United have still managed to finish sixth on three occasions in the past decade conceding this number or more. Instead, it was their stuttering attack that proved more damaging: United scored just 44 goals in 2024-25, their lowest-ever return in a Premier League season. It's an area that clearly demanded a reboot, but can the new trio gel and flourish within Amorim's system?
Projecting how an individual player will perform at a new club is always fraught with uncertainty. The crystal ball becomes murkier still when trying to anticipate the chemistry of an entirely rebuilt forward line. Still, the roles and performances of the trio at their respective clubs in recent seasons offer encouraging signs that they can complement and even elevate each other's strengths.
The most basic test of this fluidity is positional: will they get in each other's way? We don't know what exact configuration Amorim will settle on next season — Sesko has yet to sign while Mbeumo and Cunha have played just 45 minutes together in a preseason friendly against Everton — but on paper the trio appear well-balanced.
Looking at their touch maps from last season, Mbeumo shows a strong preference for the right flank, Cunha drifts inside from the left rather than hugging the touchline, and Sesko typically operates through the middle, making it entirely feasible to start all three in their favoured positions.
But simply slotting three talented players in their favoured roles is no guarantee of chemistry. What matters most is how they interact. Does the centre-forward make the kind of runs the wide players like to pick out? Do they play the passes he thrives on? Do they press as a coherent unit?
Cunha and Mbeumo profile as near mirror images of one another, which should allow them to dovetail naturally and play off each other. Both excel at driving their teams up the pitch with surging ball carries and progressive passes — the kind of attacking profiles United sorely lacked last season, as shown in the graphic below. Cunha also brings the added benefit of having played as a left-sided No 10 for Wolves in a 3-4-2-1 system, the same setup Amorim is steadfastly committed to at United.
What's less clear is how these wide attackers will link up with Sesko. Part of that uncertainty stems from the Slovenian's relative inexperience, coupled with two contrasting campaigns at Leipzig that muddy the waters when it comes to identifying his natural playing style.
When Sesko signed for Leipzig, he was deployed as a classic penalty-box striker — playing on the shoulder of the last defender, with most of his touches concentrated in advanced areas. But last season, as Leipzig's form cratered and their attacking issues began to resemble United's, the creative supply line faltered. Sesko was often forced to drop deeper to get involved.
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To get a better sense of how he might fit, we can look at the kind of centre-forward Cunha and Mbeumo have thrived alongside in the past, what Amorim typically demands from his strikers, and how well Sesko matches that profile.
While they share stylistic traits, Mbeumo and Cunha tend to look for slightly different things from their centre-forward. For starters, Mbeumo enjoyed a much stronger partnership with Yoane Wissa at Brentford last season than Cunha did with Jorgen Strand Larsen at Wolves.
Mbeumo combined with Wissa 166 times, compared to just 80 passes between Cunha and Strand Larsen. But for the Cameroonian international, it wasn't just about this link-up play. He thrived just as much on Wissa's tireless off-ball movement, which intelligently created space for him to exploit. The sight of Wissa dragging a defender away with an overlapping or underlapping run, allowing Mbeumo to cut inside and curl one in with his left foot, became a regular feature at the Gtech Community Stadium last season.
By contrast, Cunha typically looked for Strand Larsen to drop deep, using the Norwegian's imposing physical frame to play quick wall passes that allowed Cunha to burst towards the edge of the box as he cut inside from the left. One such sequence is shown below, taken from Wolves' 3-0 home win against Leicester last season.
Across both seasons at Leipzig, Sesko has shown this willingness to drop deep and link up with the midfield. According to tracking data from SkillCorner, he has ranked highly among European strikers for both runs coming short and runs that support the ball carrier in each of his Bundesliga campaigns. This suggests that he can offer Cunha and Mbeumo a platform for quick, fluid, short-passing combinations.
But it's long, direct runs into the channels that Amorim truly prizes in his centre-forwards — movements that stretch defences and open up space for the two No 10s to attack. Sesko made more of these runs during his debut campaign, but they became less frequent as Leipzig's overall form declined. By contrast, existing forward Rasmus Hojlund has consistently shown a willingness to make these runs, even if he often remains peripheral in build-up play.
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United's style under the Portuguese coach is built on slow, patient build-up — only Manchester City recorded a lower direct speed in the league last season, but long passes into the channels for the striker remain a key tactical outlet. While Hojlund may be more eager to make these kinds of movements, the issue lies in what happens when the ball is actually played into him.
Despite standing at 6ft 3in, Hojlund struggles in the air, winning just 25 per cent of his aerial duels last season — a figure that ranks him near the bottom among strikers across Europe. What Sesko may lack in movement, he makes up for with his ability to make the ball stick. The scatter plot below highlights just how much more aerially dominant he is than Hojlund. He also far outstrips the Dane for successful take-ons per 90 minutes — an important trait for when long balls are lumped forward and the striker must fend off defenders while waiting for the attacking cavalry to arrive.
United don't yet have the structure behind the attack to support a Haaland-type forward — one who loiters around the box, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. Their No 9 needs to roll up their sleeves, get their shorts muddy, and get involved. And there's plenty of evidence that Sesko is more than willing to do just that.
But perhaps most encouraging is his Haaland-like knack for finding and finishing chances, regardless of what's going on behind him. Leipzig have endured two topsy-turvy campaigns, yet Sesko hit double figures for goals in both.
In fact, all three of United's new forwards scored more than 10 goals last season. The easiest and quickest way for them to build chemistry and confidence is to carry that trait over to Old Trafford.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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