Carlos Baleba’s move to Manchester United has brought a fresh chapter, but his farewell to Brighton revealed as much about his character as it did about his new club. On Tuesday, Baleba described United as “the club of my dreams” and said it would be a “real honor” to wear the red shirt at Old Trafford.

Before turning to his new start, the midfielder chose to reflect on the club that shaped him. Brighton signed him as a teenager in 2023 for $31.5 million (£23.2 million), after Moisés Caicedo had left for Chelsea in a deal that was then a Premier League record. Baleba was asked to step into that role, and the demands that came with it never appeared to shake him.

Rather than simply posting a brief message online, Baleba used his first words after the United announcement to write, in effect, an open letter to Brighton supporters. He made clear that the club’s influence on him would last well beyond his departure.

“I never said very much while I was here. I am not going to pretend that changes today. So, Brighton took a 19-year-old, who could not speak the language, gave him a shirt and gave him the time to grow up,” Baleba reflected. “Nobody had to do that. I will be looking for your result every week for the rest of my life. Thank you, Brighton fans.”

He also explained how he responded to the expectation of replacing Caicedo: “Nobody tells you what you are supposed to do with that, so I did the only thing I know how to do. I trained, I went home. I came back the next day and trained again.”

Baleba said he spent a lot of his first season waiting for opportunities, but the breakthrough arrived in 2024–25 when he scored against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. “We lost 4–2, so nobody outside [Brighton] remembers that goal. I remember that was the day I stopped feeling like I was wearing somebody else’s shirt,” he said.

He also recalled a 92nd-minute winner against West Ham United and, later, a painful 22-minute outing against Aston Villa, when he was substituted early in a difficult 2025–26 campaign.

Bruno Fernandes was judged the standout player of the 2025-26 Premier League by the people who had to face him every week, even though he did not finish the campaign with the title.

That verdict mattered because the PFA award is decided by players rather than journalists, supporters, sponsors or panels. It carried extra weight, then, even if the result still stirred disagreement. Fernandes had already collected the FWA Footballer of the Year and the Premier League Player of the Season, and the PFA honour completed a clean sweep of the major individual prizes in English soccer.

Not everyone accepted the outcome. “Ridiculous,” said celebrity Arsenal fan Piers Morgan after Fernandes received the large PFA trophy in London, adding that Rice “should have won this.”

Declan Rice had been the most obvious alternative, helped by his role in Arsenal’s first Premier League triumph in 22 years. He still finished with recognition of his own, earning a place in the PFA Team of the Year alongside four Arsenal teammates: William Saliba, Gabriel, Jurriën Timber and goalkeeper David Raya. Fernandes also gave a hint of where his own vote went, saying on stage: “I won’t say who it was but I voted for [an] Arsenal player,”

Yet the pattern behind the voting was familiar. The best individual performer is not always a title winner, and the award history backed that up. Fernandes’s treble followed a run in which the top honours often matched the same player across different bodies, but not always from a champion side.

Rice had an excellent season and was central to Arsenal’s title run, but Fernandes was the more influential figure overall. Manchester United finished third, though that did not stop the captain from being recognised by his peers as the best of the lot.

Carlos Baleba’s arrival has already been framed as an important piece of Manchester United’s midfield rebuild, but his shirt choice has added another layer of interest. The 22-year-old joins with a $95.5 million (£70 million) fee attached and is expected to settle quickly after a summer that has also brought Youri Tielemans and Andrey Santos into the midfield picture.

Baleba has been given the No. 20 shirt, a number that initially appears unremarkable but has built up considerable meaning across United history. Diogo Dalot was the most recent player to wear it, having made the same switch that Gary Neville made in 1996 when he had established himself as Sir Alex Ferguson’s first-choice right back and moved to No. 2.

The number became more notable after Neville gave it up and it was passed to Ole Gunnar Solskjær, the Norwegian striker who became known as the ‘baby faced assassin.’ Solskjær wore No. 20 when he scored the stoppage-time winner in the 1999 Champions League final against Bayern Munich, and he kept the shirt throughout a United career that brought 12 major trophies, including six Premire League titles.

Robin van Persie also made No. 20 part of United history. He wore it during the 2012–13 campaign, when he won the Premier League title and Golden Boot after scoring 30 goals in his debut season following his move from current Premier League champions Arsenal.

Baleba is not being asked to match that sort of output. His value lies elsewhere. The expectation is that he will add athleticism, energy and dynamism to a midfield that has lacked those qualities for some time. In turn, that should help United press more effectively, win possession more often and transition forward with greater purpose.