Matheus Cunha was absent from Manchester United’s team to face Brentford after a sore hip flexor, Michael Carrick confirmed ahead of kickoff. The forward, who scored last weekend, did not progress quickly enough in training to take his place.

Carrick addressed the situation directly: “He was looking quite promising during the week,” he said. “We thought he’d be O.K. but he didn’t quite progress quick enough. It’s nothing to serious but unfortunately he misses out tonight.” The manager’s message underlined that the issue is not judged severe, with a crucial home meeting against Liverpool six days away.

Carrick altered the frontline by bringing Amad Diallo into the side and handing the number nine role to Benjamin Šeško. Bryan Mbeumo was shifted onto the left wing, a position he does not favor but one from which he has previously found success. The right-sided left footer scored while operating from the left against both Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur.

United’s selected XI (4-2-3-1): Senne Lammens; Diogo Dalot, Harry Maguire, Ayden Heaven, Luke Shaw; Casemiro, Kobbie Mainoo; Amad Diallo, Bruno Fernandes, Bryan Mbeumo; Benjamin Šeško.

Substitutes: Altay Bayındır (GK), Patrick Dorgu, Tyrell Malacia, Noussair Mazraoui, Leny Yoro, Mason Mount, Manuel Ugarte, Shea Lacey, Joshua Zirkzee.

Cunha’s absence will be felt, but the broader context of the campaign remains unsettled. Brighton & Hove Albion, however, are eight points adrift of gatecrashing the Champions League contingent. At the start of Carrick’s reign, Cunha could not force his way into the matchday team even when fully fit; Patrick Dorgu emerged as the durable wide option, justifying selection with goals against Manchester City and Arsenal.

United will now manage Cunha’s recovery with the Liverpool fixture approaching at Old Trafford. The club will hope the issue does not develop into a longer problem and that the squad can cope without him for the immediate challenge.

Ruben Amorim is reportedly in no hurry to return to management after his January exit from Old Trafford, and sources suggest he plans to spend the entire 2026-27 season on the sidelines. A BOLA says that a delayed return could increase the compensation United owe, since Amorim remained contracted to the club until the end of that season.

The sabbatical is not presented as a simple break. Amorim is said to want to use the year away to develop his approach, holding conversations with people he regards as role models and reflecting on what went wrong during his Old Trafford tenure. It is stressed that an enticing offer could draw him back, but he is not thought to be encouraging approaches at present.

Recent club accounts show United set aside a maximum of £15.9 million in compensation for Amorim and his backroom staff, with a final settlement still to be negotiated. It remains unclear what conditions would trigger the full amount, although a delayed return to work is thought to carry extra financial implications for the Portuguese manager.

The financial fallout from Amorim’s spell will linger. When United appointed him in November 2024 they paid £11 million in compensation to Sporting CP. That followed a £10.4 million payment to former boss Erik ten Hag when his contract was terminated weeks earlier. Reports state Amorim received around £7.8 million in wages during his brief time at Old Trafford.

Added together, those figures leave the cost of the Amorim era at £34.7 million ($44.9 million) and that tally does not include the fee required to terminate Ten Hag’s contract. The club accounts cited an approximate cost of £550,000 per game for the Amorim period, an expensive outlay for a boss described as having the lowest win percentage at United since Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure.

Those sizeable compensation packages are difficult to sustain. The club’s significant expenses have affected its finances and may influence the search for Amorim’s permanent successor, with the Red Devils wary of agreeing another large payout to secure their next manager.

Manchester United failed in its bid to overturn the red card shown to Lisandro Martínez in the Premier League defeat to Leeds United. The club lodged an appeal against the dismissal found on VAR review, but the FA’s regulatory commission has confirmed the appeal was unsuccessful and Martínez will serve the three-match suspension originally imposed.

After the game, Michael Carrick was blunt in his assessment of the decision. “That decision was one of the worst I’ve ever seen,” Carrick fumed after the game. “[Calvert-Lewin] can throw his arms in Licha’s face—and then he’s sent off. Shocking. I don’t even know what it looks like. It’s not a pull, it’s not a tug, it’s not aggressive. He touches [the hair] and he gets sent off. We have got to be careful where the game is going. It is a shocking decision, absolutely shocking.” Carrick later reiterated his view but declined to expand: “It’s obvious how I felt after the game, and I still feel that way now. I don’t want to go into it now. It is what it is. We have to accept it and move on.”

The club secretary’s letter, dated two days after the match, “set out in detail” why United believed the dismissal was wrongful and that the standard punishment would be “clearly excessive.” United included three videos with the appeal: one of the full incident between Calvert-Lewin and Martínez, one showing contact made on Leny Yoro during the same match, and footage of a February hair-pulling incident involving Kenny Tete for which a sending off did not follow.

The presiding commission, made up of former referee Steve Bennett, former Premier League champion Stuart Ripley and ex-defender Francis Benali, found unanimously that there was no “obvious error” by the match officials. The judgement stated: “The pulling of a person’s hair can be interpreted to fall outside the normal constituent elements of a challenge in football and can therefore fall into the category of violent conduct. The commission did not feel that it could be said with any confidence that the force exerted by [Lisandro Martínez] on [Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s] hair/scalp was negligible.” The panel said Martínez “grasped” the hair and Calvert-Lewin’s reaction “suggested that he had felt a certain amount of force exerted upon his hair/scalp.” It concluded “it was not outside the parameters of reasonableness for the Referee to have interpreted the VAR footage in the way that he did and he could not, therefore, be said to have made an obvious error.”

The commission added that although hair pulling is low on the violent conduct scale it “ought not to be tolerated” and “should be discouraged through consistent punishment.” Martínez has served the first match of the ban and will miss the Premier League games with Brentford (April 27) and Liverpool (May 3); he will be eligible to return at Sunderland on May 9. The suspension might have been more disastrous had events unfolded slightly differently.