Michael Carrick has turned Sesko into Rooney and Gary Neville STILL not convinced

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Football365

·24 February 2026

Michael Carrick has turned Sesko into Rooney and Gary Neville STILL not convinced

‘Man Utd’s £207m strike force pays dividends with goal to echo glory years’ apparently. Seems a fair reaction to a 1-0 win over Everton.

Oh and Eberechi Eze plays chess, don’t you know?

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Stand by for Benjamin Sesko as Wayne Rooney…

We’re not saying that Jason Burt of the Daily Telegraph has got carried away with a 1-0 win over Everton for Manchester United that featured a grand total of three shots on target for the Reds but…

Man Utd’s £207m strike force pays dividends with goal to echo glory years

It was a nice goal but ‘echo glory years’? The desperation for Manchester United success from certain old-school journalists is dripping off the screen.

For Manchester United this was not just a win. It was, at last, an affirmation of their decision to go all in and overhaul their forward line last summer. All three of their recruits combined to score the kind of glorious counter-attacking goal that has been United’s trademark of old. A trademark that had appeared to belong to a distant past. Heck, Wayne Rooney was in the crowd and there – dare it be said – were even shades of him, Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez as Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo and Benjamin Sesko combined to devastating effect from one end of the pitch to the other in a few seconds to settle it. Sesko started and finished it.

First, who the f*** thought they should not go ‘all in and overhaul their forward line’ last summer after a season when they finished 15th and scored 10 fewer goals than Wolves?

And ‘dare it be said’ that Cunha, Mbeumo and Sesko evoked memories of one of the most devastating attacking trios of all time? Apparently it dare be said and it really is bollocks. Heck indeed.

Who is Sesko in this scenario? Rooney, we presume. Penny for the (other) big man’s thoughts. But here’s Burt again:

For Sesko, it is six goals in seven appearances. He will not like the super-sub tag, and is surely due a start, but there is a rich tradition of that role at United and, crucially, the 22-year-old is scoring goals that are winning points. Not the third in a 3-0 victory.

Wouldn’t it be better if it were the third in a 3-0 victory? That would suggest that Manchester United are not just ever so slightly superior to Everton because they have a £74m striker on the bench.

We are being churlish, of course, because who doesn’t want to praise the 22-year-old man ‘who showed the pace and desire to leave Everton captain James Tarkowski in his wake’? That’s the 33-year-old James Tarkowski.

The urges of Gary Neville

Over at the Daily Mail and they have broken out the capitals again…

Gary Neville tells Man United to ‘pursue another manager RIGHT NOW’ and suggests hiring old team-mate Michael Carrick is a ‘risk’ despite his almost-faultless start

Seems harsh, doesn’t it? Especially after Manchester United scored a ‘goal to echo glory years’. Neville of all people should remember the glory years.

‘Gary Neville has urged Manchester United not to appoint Michael Carrick as their permanent manager at the end of this season,’ it says here.

Which is weird because Neville literally said this: “I’m not against him being appointed. I love him to bits and think that he’s done an incredible job so far.”

It’s almost like he’s not urging Manchester United not to appoint Michael Carrick as their permanent manager at the end of this season.

It’s almost like he was just saying – before the game against Everton – that it would be remiss of Manchester United not to look at alternatives. Like grown-ups.

Eze does it, grandmaster

After Arsenal ‘exposed Tottenham’s guilty secret’ by being better than the 16th best team in the Premier League, we turn to The Sun for some in-depth tactical chat. Because obviously The Sun is the natural home for in-depth tactical chat.

How North London Derby specialist Eze exposed Tottenham in Arsenal’s 4-1 mauling with chess master brain

His ‘chess master brain’ is so very wonderfully Sun. Why not call him a boffin or a geek?

So how did he do it, guys? Was it by being better at football than the hapless Tottenham players?

As well as his goals, Eze’s efforts in the midfield dictated the game and allowed Arsenal to create space in the attacking positions.

His ‘efforts in the midfield’? Ted Lasso? Is that you? And not sure you can ‘dictate the game’ by having the least number of touches of any Arsenal starter.

It’s almost like Eze a) scoring twice and b) playing chess are the only relevant pieces of information in this tactical expose from The Sun’s self-ordained ‘tactics guru’.

But wait, there’s more…

Eze does play chess, and he appears to be two steps ahead of his opposition at times. While many players are looking for their position, he seems to be searching for the space to collect the ball. Despite Yves Bissouma‘s best efforts, Eze was able to get space in the no10 position and affect the game.

We’re buggered if we know what ‘looking for their position’ means, but we definitely thinks it’s his chess knowledge that allowed him to get the better of a midfielder starting his fourth Premier League game of the season for a team yet to win a Premier League football match in 2026, ‘despite his best efforts’.