This time last year Benjamin Sesko was in the middle of a run of seven goals for RB Leipzig in eight games in all competitions, one that was interrupted by the winter break but nonetheless further burnished his reputation as one of the finest young attacking prospects in European football.
But that was chiefly in the Bundesliga and here is the problem that all the Premier League recruiters face when it is time to commit to contracts and remit transfer fees. How does that Bundesliga form translate? What price that goal away at Holstein Kiel in December? What about the two at home against Augsburg in September? What will this all mean when he is in the Premier League having his toes stepped on by Cristian Romero with the crowd sceptical and the pundits asking questions.
Sesko, 22, certainly stood out in the Bundesliga – that astonishing leap that meant as a teenager he could jump high enough to dislodge a basketball balanced on a hoop with his right foot. He scored 27 goals in 64 Bundesliga games. He looked the part. But by Wednesday night, he had not scored for United in three months, not since the start of October when he scored the second of his two in two games – previously his only two goals for United.
Against Burnley, Sesko finally sprung into life in the space of 10 second-half minutes that he will hope will begin his United career anew. The first, a run in behind in anticipation of Bruno Fernandes’ nudge into the inside-right channel.
The second was even better. He took Patrick Dorgu’s cross from the left first time with his right foot – but it was not just a swing, rather an accomplished steer into the unguarded part of Martin Dubravka’s goal.
Yet there were other chances too. By the end Sesko finished with seven shots on the Burnley goal, more than any Premier League player has racked up in a single game all season. There were good chances for the hat-trick. First from a pass from Luke Shaw and then another from Matheus Cunha when Sesko could not turn in the act of taking the ball as smoothly as he would have wished. Then there was another cross from Dorgu that Sesko hit with his left and knew straight away that he should have lashed past Dubravka rather than straight into the Burnley goalkeeper’s gloves.
Still, it was his best night yet for United. The abandonment of Ruben Amorim’s 3-4-2-1 system played its part. The latest Old Trafford interim, Darren Fletcher, picked that formation which gave the wide players more scope to stay forward. On the left, Dorgu’s hard-running performance benefited Sesko. He took a while to warm up with a couple of first-half headers and a weak side-foot finish but the change after half time was impressive.
Sesko looks that much more raw now removed from the Bundesliga and playing in Europe’s top division where the hustle is always on. Of the Premier League bound Bundesliga goalscoring exports over the course of past year, the two from Eintracht Frankfurt, Omar Marmoush and Hugo Ekitike have so far adapted the best. Nick Woltemade has had his moments. Florian Wirtz has been much slower to adjust.
For Sesko, as with Wirtz, there is a requirement for greater physicality. His fellow United signings Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo come oven-ready with that Premier League-experience robustness. Sesko – new to the league – still has something of the callow exchange student about him. He is not yet at the stage of his career where he might dominate a centre-back. But there is time for all that.
The best Premier League strikers have been capable of it all: linking play, aggression capable of unsettling defences, winning the ball in the air, keeping the ball on the ground and scoring goals. That is what Sesko will be judged upon and it seemed that early in his United career Amorim’s faith migrated quickly to Cunha and Mbeumo over allowing his Slovenian striker finding his feet in the Premier League.
Sesko was a long-term Arsenal target for more than a year until Nicola Berta, the club’s new director of football, pushed for the signing of Viktor Gyokeres over the younger man. That is not looking like a sure bet, although Sesko’s problems have hardly made him look like the right man either. Now Sesko has four Premier League goals to Gyokeres’s five, with a further two in the Champions League. Gyokeres has not scored in three games. Sesko has now ended a streak of nine without a goal.
Sesko has scored twice at the dawn of a new era for United, and playing in a system that the club had long hoped Amorim would himself turn towards. That is not a bad fresh start. Whoever takes United into yet another new dawn will be expected to oversee the development of Sesko. His performance at Turf Moor will certainly have reassured those who were worried at the pace of his adjustment so far.