Michael Carrick has acknowledged that Manchester United must identify a long-term replacement for Casemiro and recruit into what he described as an \u201cimportant position\u201d in defensive midfield. Carrick made clear the central role the position plays in linking a squad and the influence Casemiro has had within the dressing room.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not being biased, obviously, as being in midfield, but I think it is an important position to try and tie everything together, and you\u2019re connected to the whole team, and that\u2019s sometimes emotionally, a little bit mentally, and showing that composure and understanding of the game a little bit, and Cas has had a big influence within the group on that, so something we\u2019re fully aware of moving forward for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reported targets include Adam Wharton of Crystal Palace, Elliot Anderson of Nottingham Forest and Carlos Baleba of Brighton & Hove Albion. The club faces the additional uncertainty of whether Carrick will still be in charge to integrate any new signing; his deal expires this summer.<\/p>\n
United\u2019s current 24-man squad contains remnants from five different permanent managers and is being led by a sixth unique figure. That mixture of signings from multiple managerial regimes is illustrated by the defensive line selected against West Ham United: goalkeeper Senne Lammens, signed under Ruben Amorim, backed up a back four of Diogo Dalot (bought by Jos\u00e9 Mourinho), Harry Maguire (Ole Gunnar Solskj\u00e6r), Lisandro Mart\u00ednez (Erik ten Hag) and Luke Shaw (Louis van Gaal).<\/p>\n
At board level there has also been turnover. Dan Ashworth\u2019s arrival as sporting director lasted five months and cost the club \u00a34.1 million ($5.5 million). Recruitment duties are now shared by director of football Jason Wilcox and technical director Christopher Vivell. Their summer window produced signings seen as clear wins in Bryan Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Senne Lammens, while Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko has shown promising signs in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
Market dynamics have helped United. A run of expensive striker deals in summer 2025 saw six of the nine most costly moves involve centre forwards, and United bought two of those forwards, Matheus Cunha and Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko. Conversely, demand and prices for defensive midfielders have cooled; average prices for the 10 most expensive midfielders fell from \u20ac64.4 million in 2023\u201324 to \u20ac40.9 million in 2025\u201326. Data via Transfermarkt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carrick accepts United must replace Casemiro and targets a defensive midfielder amid squad overhaul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7049,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1163],"tags":[216,215,939],"class_list":["post-7050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-transfers","tag-adam-wharton","tag-carlos-baleba","tag-casemiro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050","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=7050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}