A £40m drop in twelve months
Manchester United spent a year being told Carlos Baleba was untouchable at anything under £100 million. This morning the number quoted to them was £60 million, around €70m, according to the Daily Mail.
That is a 40 percent reduction on a valuation Brighton held firm on last summer, and it reflects a season in which the Cameroon international did not play to the level his price tag implied. Baleba is 22. He turned 22 in the middle of a campaign that never quite took off, and the market moved accordingly.
The figure still sits above his Estimated Transfer Value of €53.5m. It sits well below the €70.2m peak he touched earlier this year, which gives some sense of how quickly midfield valuations swing when form dips.
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United’s third midfielder
Michael Carrick has already reshaped his midfield this window. Youri Tielemans arrived from Aston Villa and Andrey Santos from Chelsea for a combined €97 million, and both are expected to start. United wanted a third body, and originally they wanted a marquee one.
That plan collapsed on price. Elliot Anderson went to Manchester City for a club-record €135m. Sandro Tonali joined Tottenham as part of a €260m summer at the club. Bruno Guimaraes signed for Arsenal. Each of those was on United’s list, and each time the fee ended the conversation.
Baleba fits a specific gap. Tielemans, Santos and Kobbie Mainoo are all comfortable on the ball and none of them covers ground at pace. Baleba does, and his defensive work in the middle third is the part of his game that held up best last season.
Newcastle are in the room
United are not alone. Newcastle need a replacement for Guimaraes and have registered interest in the same player at the same reduced price.
Carrick said last week that the squad still needs additions. “I think we’ve got a pretty good balance in all when you lay the squad out, but yeah, of course, we would like more,” he said. “We would like more, we need to keep pushing for more.”
He also talked about how his own playing career shapes his coaching. “Naturally, midfield is a big part of the teams that I’ve coached,” Carrick said. Whether that translates into rebuilding a 22-year-old who has just lost £40m of market value is the actual question United are weighing.
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