Carrick excited for Baleba’s Man Utd impact

Syndicated reporting provided by Stats Perform and reviewed by the SoccerNews editorial team.

Michael Carrick is relishing the opportunity to get Carlos Baleba fit and firing for Manchester United.

The Red Devils signed Baleba from Brighton earlier this week, spending a reported £65m plus £5m in add-ons to bring in the midfielder.

No player won more tackles across all competitions for Brighton than Baleba’s 100 since his debut for the Seagulls, while he ranked second behind Jan Paul van Hecke for duels won (469) and interceptions (117) in that time.

United will not be able to hand Baleba a debut for several weeks, with the 22-year-old recovering from a minor injury.

But Carrick cannot wait to see Baleba make an impact.

“He’s got a little ankle issue so maybe a couple of weeks or so, maybe three weeks,” said Carrick ahead of United, who lost to Hull City last week, facing Ipswich Town.

“But we knew that before so it’s no major issue. It’ll be great to have him when we can.

“Huge potential. Massive potential. A really exciting signing for us. 

“The quality he has, the attributes he has, which offsets the balance of the group we’ve got and [adds] different combinations. 

“Absolutely delighted to have him. There’s so much more to come from him. It’s exciting for us.”

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) August 25, 2026

United’s defeat at Hull was one of the shock results of the Premier League’s opening weekend.

The Red Devils are out to avoid becoming just the fourth top-flight team ever to lose their first two games of a season against newly promoted clubs – the others are Everton in 1902-03, Sheffield United in 1929-30, and Bristol City in 1977-78.

Carrick remains winless in all three of his Premier League meetings with promoted clubs (D1 L2). As United boss, he has a 0.33 points per game record against promoted teams, compared to 2.47 points per game (P17 W13 D3 L1) against non-promoted teams.

“First home game of the season is one we look forward to. Massively looking forward to the game,” Carrick said.

“We had a setback last week and we want to get back to playing well and winning football matches. 

“We’ve got a good squad. We could pick a variety of combinations. Certainly [all] the boys are massively in contention.”

United are unbeaten in their last eight home league games against Ipswich (W6 D2), winning the last four by an aggregate score of 18-2.

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