📅 August 19, 2026
£65m for Zero Goal Contributions: The Case Against Signing Baleba
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Manchester United are close to signing Carlos Baleba for a package worth around £65m. Personal terms are agreed, a five-year contract to 2031 is ready, and a medical is being arranged.
The case against it is mostly made of numbers.
He contributed nothing in the final third last season
Baleba played 31 Premier League matches in 2025/26 and finished with 0 goals and 0 assists.
Not one. In 1,662 minutes.
The season before he managed three goals and an assist from 34 games. Modest, but something. Last season the something became nothing, and United are paying more for the version that produced less.
His average match rating was 6.62. For context, that’s lower than Lewis Hall’s 6.99, and Hall is a left-back United have been told they can’t buy.
He barely touches the ball
This is the statistic that should worry Michael Carrick most.
Among Premier League midfielders, Baleba ranks in the 14th percentile for touches. Not the 14th best. The 14th percentile, which means roughly six of every seven midfielders in the division see more of the ball than he does.
He’s also in the 38th percentile for shots. He wins headers well, at the 82nd percentile, and his general defensive volume sits at the 61st percentile.
So the profile is a midfielder who defends acceptably, jumps well, rarely gets on the ball and almost never threatens the goal. United are buying that for £65m to play in a system that presses high and attacks in numbers.
His defensive numbers went backwards too
The argument for Baleba has always been the destroying, so look at the destroying.
In 2024/25 he made 79 tackles and 46 interceptions. Those interceptions put him fifth among all Premier League midfielders, in the 91st percentile, with 197 recoveries at the same mark. That’s a genuinely elite defensive season.
In 2025/26 he made 37 tackles and 29 interceptions, and his defensive contribution percentile fell from the 91st to the 61st.
One honest caveat, because the raw numbers overstate it. He started 23 matches last season against 31 the year before, so a chunk of that decline is just fewer minutes. Adjusted per 90, his tackling drops from roughly 2.6 to 2.0 and his interceptions are close to flat. The collapse is real, but it isn’t as total as the counting stats suggest.
What that caveat doesn’t fix is the other half of it: he lost his place. A 22-year-old who was elite in 2024/25 started eight fewer games the following season for a mid-table side. Something went wrong, and United are paying a premium anyway.
United are paying well over his market value
The plainest number in the whole story:
| Valuation | Figure |
|---|---|
| FotMob market value | €53.5m |
| Transfermarkt market value | €55m |
| United’s package | ~€76m (£65m) |
Two independent valuation models put him in the low fifties in euros. United are offering around €76m. That’s roughly €21m over what the data says he’s worth, for a player coming off zero goal contributions.
And Brighton still want more. David Ornstein reports United’s €70.1m plus €5.8m in add-ons is still below Brighton’s valuation. So the final fee, if this completes, goes up from here.
He can’t play
Baleba suffered an ankle ligament injury on 6 August, missed Brighton’s friendly against Strasbourg and is a doubt for the start of the season.
United would be spending their biggest fee of the summer on a player who can’t train fully, and putting him through a medical on ligaments that are still healing.
They’ve already been here. The Ederson deal with Atalanta was fully agreed in June at around £39m and abandoned in July when the medical raised concerns. A medical isn’t a formality at this club this summer. It’s already cost them one midfielder.
This is the fourth choice, not the first
The sequence matters, because it explains the price.
Ederson was agreed and collapsed. Mateus Fernandes was the primary target and Tottenham paid £85m. Elliot Anderson was missed. Only then does Baleba become the deal, with thirteen days left in the window and no time left to look elsewhere.
United know it, Brighton know it, and the fee reflects it. A club negotiating from strength doesn’t end up above two independent valuations for an injured player it publicly cooled on seventy-two hours earlier.
And it’s the wrong position anyway
This would be United’s third midfielder of the summer. Andrey Santos cost around £50m. Youri Tielemans cost £35m. Baleba would take midfield spending alone past £150m.
Meanwhile no defender has been signed at all. Luke Shaw is 31 and out of contract in June 2027, with a converted winger and two 19-year-olds behind him. That side of the pitch is where Samuel Chukwueze produced a goal and two assists against United on Saturday. A back line that conceded 50 goals last season is unchanged.
Newcastle have said Lewis Hall is not for sale. Eduardo Camavinga has said no. So United are spending their largest fee of the window on their third-best-stocked position while the worst one goes unaddressed.
The counter-argument, stated fairly
He’s 22. He has 112 Brighton appearances and Premier League experience most 22-year-olds don’t have. Defensive midfielders develop late, his 2024/25 season proves the ceiling is real, and Brighton’s manager has said the speculation about United affected him, which means some of the dip is United’s own doing rather than his.
Buy the 2024/25 player and £65m looks fine. Buy the 2025/26 player and it doesn’t.
The problem is they’re buying in August 2026, from a position of no leverage, above market value, with an injury, having missed three other targets. Call that what it is. Settling.
What to watch
The final fee. United are already above the models and still below Brighton. Every extra million makes this worse.
The medical. With Ederson as the precedent.
Whether a left-back follows. If Baleba arrives and nobody else does, United will have spent the summer fixing the position they’d already spent £85m on.
Hull City away, Saturday, 12:30 UK and 7:30 in the morning Eastern. None of this arrives in time, and Shaw starts at left-back regardless.
Source: Sky Sports — Manchester United close to full agreement with Brighton for Carlos Baleba