Šeško to Manchester United is happening

According to every single transfer news reporter on Elon’s terrible website, Benjamin Šeško to Manchester United is all but official. He’ll cost about £70m guaranteed with £5m of potential add-ons.

The 6’5” tall jump king is an outrageously talented header of the ball, has some bonkers shot power, and is very fast for his size. I don’t think there’s a striker in world football with a higher physical ceiling. He has also not yet turned in anything approaching £70m production with RB Leipzig.

Šeško just doesn’t get that many shots. He also provides no dribbling, passing, or assisting value to his team. He is all tools. All potential. If Man United gets exactly this level of production from him, they will feel like they made a bad deal. They’re betting on him improving these numbers by a lot.

The last time Manchester United bet on an elite athlete improving under them despite having no record of great production at striker is when they bought Rasmus Højlund for almost the exact same fee. Højlund has not worked out, and is now being moved on to make room for Šeško. Some reports say the asking price is £40m, but I can’t imagine they’re going to get it.

Would you pay £40m for a striker with this kind of shooting output?

Instead, a conflicting report that AC Milan will take Højlund on loan with an option — not an obligation — to buy, is much more in line with the Dane’s recent level of production. This likely does not make a difference for United’s ability to sign more players under PSR; United needs to get about £35m for Højlund to break even on amortization, so a loan does the same thing for their accounting this year as a sale at that price.

I do think Man United just got better, but there are so many huge what ifs still to answer, and problems left to solve. And if Šeško is nothing more than Designer Brand Højlund, they’re going to find themselves in this exact same spot 2 years from now.

I love when the guys at The Transfer Flow Podcast do episodes that are not super Premier League focused. You’ll be unsurprised to learn they do not usually do the numbers of the transfers and Prem-focused ones, but I hope that changes soon, because I think Hayden and Neel are at their best when digging into stuff on the continent that most English-language media does not cover well.

Serie A is going to be awesome again this year, and the boys broke down why it’s so wide open:

Games we’re watching

Most of the big leagues aren’t back for another week, but we’ll still bring back this segment today. A good place to find times and TV listings for your country is LiveSoccerTV.

Birmingham vs. Ipswich — Last year’s dominant League One winners vs. the favorites to win the Championship. This should be a good litmus test of where each team is.

Southampton vs. Wrexham — The other super interesting promoted vs. relegated team showdown. Wondering if we’re going to see Tyler Dribbling or if he’s sitting out ahead of a transfer.

Crystal Palace vs. Liverpool — The Community Shield is often not a good game and almost never indicative of how good the participating teams are, but I’m going to watch it anyway and so are you.

Stuff we’re reading

Not The Top 20’s staff has a Championship cheat sheet to get caught up on all of the teams.

Ryan O’Hanlon at ESPN breaks down Wrexham’s chances of avoiding a relegation battle.

Ed Maylon and Matt Hughes at FootBiz make a case for strict financial regulations in football, while detailing the bleak problems facing Sheffield Wednesday and Morecambe.

Grace Robertson at Grace On Football is conflicted about Liverpool’s big spending summer.

Kieron O’Connor at Swiss Ramble tells you how the Reds can afford to spend so much.

Michael Caley at Expecting Goals released part two of his series on age curve projections for specific skills, not just overall player performance.

Ashwin Raman at Scouted profiles new Everton striker Thierno Barry. Get it to the big man and let him dominate.

Bradley Cunningham at Total Football Analysis looks at Brighton wonderkid Charalampos Kostoulas and wonders if the goal-scoring attacking midfielder might end up playing some striker this year.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.”