Manchester United have endured their share of fitness problems this autumn, but the international break has at least brought a couple of encouraging signs for Michael Carrick. Carlos Baleba and Matthijs de Ligt both returned to the pitch, offering a rare lift amid an otherwise difficult spell.<\/p>\n
Baleba is still waiting to make his Manchester United debut after arriving from Brighton in a deal that could rise to \u00a370 million ($92.5 million). The Cameroon international was named among the substitutes for the trip to Fulham just before the break, though he remained unused as the match ended in a 1-1 draw. Carrick had already noted that the 22-year-old is \u201cpushing to get back as quickly as possible\u201d, and the friendly against Lausanne provided a chance to give him minutes.<\/p>\n
Lausanne, who are currently bottom of the Swiss top flight, also offered a manageable test for de Ligt as he continues his return from a long layoff. The centre-back has spent close to a year out of action, with his most recent competitive appearance for the club coming in November 2025, when Ruben Amorim was still in charge.<\/p>\n
De Ligt had surgery in May on a persistent back issue, a problem that also ruled him out of this summer\u2019s World Cup. He has recently rejoined first-team training and then took another step forward by appearing for United in the behind-closed-doors friendly. A competitive comeback is still uncertain, although the Manchester Evening News suggest he could be ready as soon as next weekend\u2019s Premier League meeting with Tottenham Hotspur.<\/p>\n
Not everything has gone smoothly for Carrick during the break. Marcus Rashford and Kobbie Mainoo both withdrew from England duty before playing a part, with an ongoing hip problem cited for Rashford and no explanation given for Mainoo\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n
Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko also missed out on joining Slovenia\u2019s camp after a shin problem returned at the end of September. He said: \u201cI am already working on getting back on the pitch as soon as possible to help both the national team and my club once again,\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United received welcome fitness news as Baleba and de Ligt returned, while other injury concerns remained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,172],"tags":[178,242,180],"class_list":["post-21385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-friendly","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}