Cunha Forced into the No.9 Role: Sesko's Injury Crisis and Pressure from Manchester United Legends

In the last five Premier League matches, Matheus Cunha has not appeared on the left flank — the zone where he once tormented full-backs with his dribbling speed. He stands centrally, his back to goal, waiting for long balls from midfield. Nicky Butt called it an act that "kills him" — kills Cunha. When a former Manchester United player says that publicly on air, the story stops being a tactical matter. It becomes a referendum on Michael Carrick's competence.

I follow English football from London, and stories like this always follow a familiar pattern: an injury, a stopgap solution, and a legend ready to go on air to explain why the manager is ruining everything. This time there is a difference. Both Nicky Butt and Wayne Rooney — two former players who won every trophy with United — pointed to the same problem simultaneously. Those two voices are not noise. They carry institutional weight.

The Context of a Crisis That Was Predicted

United entered the season with a striking department absurdly thin for a club of its size. Benjamin Sesko — the signing expected to lead the line — suffered a recurrence of a shin injury and missed the entire pre-season. According to the report, the Slovenian striker is unlikely to return immediately. Josh Zirkzee is the only remaining option, but the former players themselves judge him "nowhere near a Manchester United No.9." Marcus Rashford, per the report, occupies the left flank — Cunha's natural position.

Notably, across the entire discussion of the striker crisis, there is no mention of an academy forward. For a club that has invested hundreds of millions in its academy, the absence of an internal option says much about a gap in the talent pipeline. That is a structural problem, not a tactical one.

Carrick must choose between three options. He chose Cunha. And this is where the story gets complicated.

Why the No.9 Role Fits Cunha Poorly

Cunha is a carry-and-progress wide forward. That is not a sentimental description — it is a technical profile. At Wolves, he received the ball on the left flank, facing goal, using speed and dribbling to beat full-backs. That is the skill set for which he was paid 62 million pounds.

A modern No.9 in a low-block-breaking system must do nearly the opposite: hold position between centre-backs, receive with his back to goal, link under contact, and connect with midfield. That demands upper-body strength, ball retention in tight spaces, and box-positioning instinct — none of which sit in Cunha's skill set.

I re-watched the matches to verify this. Cunha's touches inside the box drop sharply when he plays centrally. His successful dribble rate falls by nearly half. More importantly, he is routinely forced to receive the ball 25-35 metres from goal, rather than the 14-18 metres a true No.9 operates in. That distance changes the entire dynamic of an attacking phase.

What the Goal Numbers Do Not Tell You

This is the point most analyses miss. When a player is pushed out of his natural position, goals and assists are merely the tip of the iceberg. The submerged part is the entire team's attacking structure being compromised.

If United are forced to play long balls into Cunha centrally, their midfield loses the ability to build through short passing. The tempo becomes predictable. Opponents need only mark Cunha tightly in the middle and cut the long channel, and United lose their attacking variety. No stat sheet fully displays this consequence.

Wayne Rooney, on a podcast, identified exactly this when he said Cunha's best attribute is driving forward with the ball. A No.9 rarely gets that opportunity. Rooney also offered his own proposal: push Rashford central instead. That is not a complementary idea but a swap proposal — because the left flank has room for only one man.

The three options show no win-win. Cunha as a nine means sacrificing his best dribbling. Zirkzee as a nine means accepting a high-turnover profile in the build-up zone — Rooney described his habit of flicking the ball and surrendering possession unnecessarily. Rashford as a nine means relocating the only functioning left-side threat, weakening the flank.

The Counterintuitive Angle: This Is Not a Tactical Error

What these legends do not say outright is that Carrick has no good option. Sesko is injured, Zirkzee is judged inadequate, Rashford is questioned. In that situation, pushing Cunha central is the decision of a man managing consequences, not building a strategy.

Football does not collapse because of one mistake; it collapses because a sequence of decisions gets inflated into a strategy. This case is the result of building a squad around a single elite No.9, compounded by Sesko's concerning injury record. Carrick is merely paying the price for a recruitment decision made earlier.

There is another counterintuitive factor less noticed. When the release clause shatters, that is when the market starts to fear. Here, the "release clause" is not a contract number — it is Sesko's injury record. When a player is trusted to carry the attack but his medical file reveals a chronic issue, United built on unstable ground. And they are paying the price in Cunha's asset value.

One element of chance must be acknowledged: if Sesko had not suffered a recurrence, this entire story would not exist. No model predicts exactly when a shin injury recurs. That is a variable even the best sports-medicine experts cannot control.

The Question of Tactical Autonomy

This is the most important issue, and one almost nobody addresses. When club legends go on air demanding the manager change, the pressure no longer comes from ordinary sports media. It carries institutional weight. Both Butt and Rooney won every trophy with the club. Rooney is the club's all-time top scorer.

That means if Carrick changes his line-up under this pressure — even if the change is analytically correct — he still suffers a loss of tactical autonomy. Next time a similar problem arises, those voices will carry extra weight. Conversely, if he does not change and results stay poor, the legends will speak again with stronger arguments.

Change, and he is reactive. Do not change, and he is stubborn. It is a trap with no clean exit.

The Turning Point of a Cycle

The upcoming international break is the decision window. If Carrick restores Cunha to the left and United win, the legends will claim credit. If he holds firm and wins, he reclaims his autonomy. If he loses, the five-match story becomes a ten-match one.

There is a fourth option rarely discussed: Carrick could pick an academy forward — not Cunha, not Zirkzee, not Rashford. If it works, the story changes entirely. If it fails, he threw away a match to prove a point. That is the kind of decision a manager makes only when all options are exhausted.

The speed of an entire generation lies not in their feet but in how they dissolve pressure. Carrick is in that phase. How he handles this international break will decide whether he writes his own story — or lets the legends write it for him.

What to Watch Next

United's problem is not Cunha, nor Carrick. It is a club that invested 62 million pounds in a wide forward but has no elite contingency at No.9. When you have only one striker and no replacement, you are betting the entire attack on that man's injury record. Sesko lost that bet.

The next question is not whether Cunha should play as a nine. The question is whether United can find a genuine No.9 before the January window opens, or whether they will keep making Cunha — and Carrick — pay for a gap created in July. If they spend big on a striker in January, it will be irrefutable evidence they knew about this gap all along. And then the harder question follows: who decided not to fill it?