Once the euphoria wears off, Benjamin Sesko will likely bristle at the super-sub label being attached to him after his latest rescue act for Manchester United.
Strikers hate that term. A backhanded compliment, rather than a badge of honour. It is never warmly received.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was the Old Trafford owner of that title once upon a time. In more recent years it was bestowed upon Javier Hernandez, who scored 14 of his 37 league goals for United off the bench.
Right now that role has been assigned to Sesko and in the short-term at least, he’s delivering like many great super-subs have done through the years, scoring decisive goals to swing matches.
Since being left on the bench for the entirety of the Manchester derby, opportunity has been hard for Sesko to come by with Michael Carrick preferring a fluid false nine system that allows for lots of rotations between Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo, Bruno Fernandes and Amad Diallo.
Away to Arsenal Sesko got, including stoppage time, 17 minutes to make an impression on the game. He touched the ball three times and didn’t manage a single shot.
Benjamin Sesko scores the injury-time equaliser for Manchester United at West Ham on Tuesday night after coming off the bench
It’s now time for Sesko to start for United – especially when they come up against low blocks like they did at the London Stadium
At home against Fulham that was bumped up to 28 minutes and from 13 touches he hit the woodwork, then scored a 94th-minute winner in front of the Stretford End.
Twenty-one minutes versus Tottenham Hotspur followed – he should have scored in the 96th minute when he headed straight at Guglielmo Vicario from just a few yards out – and then we arrived here, at West Ham, where the general consensus going in was that he was nailed on to start.
Carrick stuck to his guns. Unchanged, again. Sesko still on the bench. It wouldn’t be until the 69th minute that the United head coach looked in his direction despite the game crying out for a focal point in a United attack that looked devoid of ideas against West Ham’s low block.
All in all, by the time the final whistle sounded, Sesko had had a grand total of 94 minutes of action across Carrick’s first five matches in charge. Truth be told, it’s not a trend that should be lasting too much longer.
‘Sesko ready to start? He’s in a good place, he’s ready to kick on,’ Carrick said of his £73.7million striker. ‘It’s just managing the balance, you know, and yeah, we could have changed things a little bit earlier.
‘That’s obviously the decision, we’re always trying to make the right one, and we were actually having a bit of a spell in the game at that point, where we thought we might come back into it and we had Casemiro’s (disallowed) goal. So there’s a balance, but certainly when he came on the pitch, he made a big difference.’
His equaliser in east London was magnificent. A first-time finish derived from instinct; a finish that illustrated Sesko’s growing confidence as well as his – speaking positively here – lack of thinking. Too much of that is often the achilles heel of young strikers.
‘It’s an unbelievable finish from the angle to generate that, to get it on target, to finish it – it’s some goal,’ Carrick added. ‘He’s capable of that, Ben. He’s done it all the time. It’s not that he’s just suddenly burst on the scene. He’s been doing it, he’s proven that he can score goals as well. He’s been doing it in training for us as well.
Sesko celebrates his winner against Fulham – also after coming off the bench under Carrick
‘It’s not surprising, to be honest. It’s what he does, it’s what he’s good at,’ says Carrick of Sesko’s finishing
‘It’s not surprising, to be honest. It’s what he does, it’s what he’s good at. The last one (against Fulham) would have done him the world of good. Tonight, a little bit different with the emotion of the game, but certainly important and a big moment for him and us.’
Sesko is the only orthodox No 9 in United’s squad and there is a distinct shift stylistically when the 6ft 5in Slovenian is leading the line compared to 5ft 7in Mbeumo, or 6ft Cunha. He’s an obsessive trainer who is convinced he’s destined for greatness.
The versatility of Carrick’s go-to attack so far of Mbeumo-Cunha-Amad is clear for all to see but against West Ham that variety was a curse rather than a blessing, as United found themselves caught between ideas. Cunha got little change out of the centre backs while Mbeumo struggled outside of his last-gasp assist for Sesko. It was comfortably one of Amad’s least effective outings.
In Sesko you know what you are going to get: a big man in the box that is a dominant threat in the air, but also a clever young footballer that has magic in his boots with the ball at his feet. The nervous, gangly striker that we saw start the season appears to be fading away.
‘If you compare the first and second halves of the season, we saw two different Benjamin Seskos,’ Slovenian pundit Denis Sme said last month of the striker. ‘In the first half, it was the old Sesko – trying hard, shooting, maybe forcing things a bit, looking nervous. Then came the second half and we saw a confident Sesko. He was demanding the ball, moving it, running, covering space.’
Sme is right, there are different versions of Sesko. Right now he’s coming off the bench like a shaken bottle of pop, exploding in a short burst, but his confidence is being generated beyond just a couple of bright cameos.
And that’s where we are now, 12 days out from United’s next game at Everton in a match where starting Sesko feels imperative, as difficult as taking out one of the regulars is. It’s time for Carrick to be brave and mix things up.
Fernandes is the captain, Amad is the best one-versus-one dribbler in the squad and Mbeumo is the team’s top scorer, while a lot of Cunha’s value extends beyond what shows up on the stats sheet. You can make strong cases for each of them to start. But on the bus back home when he began to unpack the West Ham draw with his staff, Carrick will not have needed telling that the balance of the side in a game set up for United to have so much of the ball against a low block simply wasn’t right.
Sesko offers a focal point to the United attack in a way that Bryan Mbeumo (left), Matheus Cunha and Amad Diallo do not
Without Sesko there was no real focal point in a game that mandated it, while no natural width off the left played in to West Ham’s hands as United were funnelled through central areas where they ran head-first into that compact low block.
What Sesko does is offer an alternative approach that poses a whole different set of problems. There are numerous games on the horizon where a more orthodox approach is the smarter gameplan and Carrick must trust he can win in a different way to how he has thus far.
Just a month removed from Tim Sherwood embarrassing himself on live television when he asserted that Sesko is ‘not good enough to play for Manchester United’, Carrick now has a player at his disposal that is not only more than good enough to play and score goals for United but is becoming increasingly difficult to justify leaving out from the off.
After scoring just two goals in his first 16 league games, Sesko has since scored four in his last five. Time for Carrick to be brave and show there is more to Sesko than just being a super-sub.
