In football desperation can lead to exaggeration. Straws are clung on to and early conclusions drawn. That is why in and around Manchester United so much is being made of new midfielder Carlos Baleba.

The 22-year-old has played less than two hours of Premier League football since his move from Brighton in the summer. 

He is clearly a very good player. He has a lovely first touch, can pass and seems to have the kind of awareness of time and space that no coach can really teach.

But United manager Michael Carrick got lost a little in exaggeration when describing his midfield as ‘terrific’ and ‘fantastic’ after the draw at Leeds. He is not alone.

Baleba has been hailed as some kind of shape-shifting saviour since leaving behind some early-season injury worries to come off the bench against Tottenham nine days ago.

But all the frantic hype is understandable because Baleba’s £70million switch from Brighton simply has to work. If it doesn’t, United are in even more trouble than they would appear after taking only seven points from their opening seven Premier League games.

This was the summer of the United midfield rebuild. There was £70m for Baleba, £50m for Andrey Santos from Chelsea and £35m for Youri Tielemans from Aston Villa. The club have spent upwards of £150m on a new central platform for their team and if it doesn’t work there will be no cavalry coming to sort it all out next year.

United are trying to rebuild a squad like people spruce up a house. Bathroom, kitchen, bedroom.

The intelligence from inside Old Trafford is that next summer the transfer budget will be spent on the defence. 

So the midfield has been ticked off yet still we sat at Elland Road and watched Leeds take 61 per cent of the possession.

That’s a huge number when you are playing a supposed top-six team and it shows where United are.

Carrick’s players can’t control games. Not with the ball anyway. United haven’t been able to do for years and until they do they will continue to live or die on the strength of their counter-attack.

Carrick spoke of having witnessed a ‘fresh start’ at Elland Road yesterday and that was a huge stretch.

For Baleba, the weight on a young man’s shoulders already looks rather heavy.

United bringing their own noise

Carrick also spoke yesterday of having metaphorical headphones on as he looks to find a way round his current problems. The insinuation was that the noise about United’s predicament doesn’t bother him.

I wonder how he really feels, though, about the presence in the background of an Amazon film crew and also a journalist still trying to fulfil a Jim Ratcliffe brief to write a book chronicling United’s return to eminence.

United are said to be getting in the region of £20m for allowing access to Amazon. That’s about a quarter of what a club gets for qualifying for the Champions League.

Carrick will hope that one doesn’t get in the way of the other.

Why is Farke in limbo?

At Leeds Daniel Farke is threatening to be the club’s most successful manager since David O’Leary 25 years ago.

Outside Elland Road there is a mural tribute to a real Leeds hero, Marcelo Bielsa – who brought Leeds up in 2020 but couldn’t sustain it.

Maybe Farke will get one of those, too, but what the German deserves more than anything is a new contract.

Farke had it all on to prove himself a Premier League boss after a yo-yo spell with Norwich but that journey of validation now seems complete.

The 49-year-old’s current deal with the club expires at the end of this season. It’s said a new one has been tentatively agreed.

Leeds fans will feel better when they hear news of a signature.

Did City sell the wrong goalkeeper?

The FA coaching network have been convinced for two or three years that James Trafford would get past Dean Henderson to become Jordan Pickford’s successor as England No1.

For a while that looked fanciful but national coach Thomas Tuchel agrees and with maybe good reason.

The last time we saw the Leeds goalkeeper playing regularly in the Premier League was for Burnley two seasons ago and he looked like a boy in a man’s outfit, bullied at set-pieces and unable to command his penalty area.

Here we are in 2026 – less than two years out from a home European Championship – and the Cumbrian, signed from Manchester City for £40m in the summer, looks like a different goalkeeper.

The more I watch him play this season and the more I watch Gianluigi Donnarumma at City, the more I wonder if the Manchester club sold the wrong one.

Not all City numbers are bad

City’s start to the season has been overshadowed by numbers – 115 of them to be precise – but there has been no disguising the leaps forward they have made on the field under Enzo Maresca.

The Premier League leaders have now racked up exactly 100 shots in seven games – a figure skewed a little by the fact they only managed six when playing against United with ten men before the international break.

At this time last year – at the start of Pep Guardiola’s final campaign – City had taken 84 shots on goal so the uptick is clear.

The squad depth available to Maresca also became startlingly clear on Saturday as the Italian rested his first-choice midfielders Elliot Anderson and Enzo Fernandez against Ipswich and still saw his team win comfortably.

How many other teams could do that?

Red Cartel jibe won't go away

Anger at the media’s coverage of City’s fight with the Premier League has been clear on social platforms and has spilled over a little on matchday.

Members of the broadcast media known to have links with other clubs have been taking a bit of stick as they line up on the touchline at the Etihad Stadium before kick-off.

One high-profile presenter has been accused of being a member of the ‘f*****g red cartel’.

They weren't – as far as we are aware – a member of the commission that passed down the guilty verdicts.

A big gag from Big Ron

Arsenal’s win over Nottingham Forest was so dull that victory came on the back of just one shot on target.

Better then to tell one of the great football tales from when Arsenal won at the City Ground by the same scoreline back in January 1999.

Having been appointed to try and keep Forest up – he failed – just a few days earlier, new manager Ron Atkinson mistakenly sat in the wrong dugout before kick-off.

Asked about his blunder following the game, Atkinson styled it out.

‘I turned round and saw Bergkamp sitting on one side of me and Overmars sitting on the other, ‘ he said.

‘I just thought: ‘”How the hell are this lot in the bottom three?”.’

Liverpool suffered from football's daftest law

One of football’s most ridiculous laws – and the bar here is terrifyingly high – states that a penalty or foul cannot be given at corners and set-pieces until the ball is actually in flight.

It’s because of this that Brentford’s Yehor Yarmolyuk can be sent off for his headbutt on Liverpool’s Jeremy Jacquet on Saturday but the visiting team cannot be awarded a penalty.

Has it not crossed anybody’s mind that if players knew they could be properly penalised for all the tedious argy bargy we regularly witness as we await the delivery of a corner that they may think twice before grabbing hold of their opponent in the first place?

Time for Webb to turn the page

Howard Webb spoke of what he believes to be a gradual improvement in refereeing standards in an interesting Sunday Times interview yesterday.

The head of Pro Ref also revealed that he asked for a report on the controversial Erling Haaland goal that was incorrectly allowed to stand in the Manchester derby back in September.

That report – put together by Spanish VAR consultant Vicandi Garrido – ran to 70 pages, according to Webb.

Seventy pages? What on earth was in it?

Do our managers know the rules?

The job of the average Premier League referee is not getting any easier and it doesn’t help when managers turn a blind eye to the laws of the game.

David Moyes was right when he said that Harrison Armstrong’s tackle on Chelsea’s Josh Acheampong was one that ‘everybody in the crowd loved’ and it would have been deemed a fair one back when the Everton boss was earning a living as a centre half.

But the fact is that the laws have changed and Armstrong’s challenge failed the modern sniff test on at least two metrics.

Moyes also didn’t help himself by admitting to the BBC in the same interview that ‘I haven’t had a look at it yet’.

Why Gomez beats Beckham

Diego Gomez’s 56-yard goal for Brighton in their 5-0 dismantling of Crystal Palace was 20 yards closer to goal than the one he tried at Sunderland a week earlier. So it seems there may have been some practising taking place.

Meanwhile, comparisons with David Beckham’s famous goal for United at Palace 1996 are fair but Gomez probably shades it.

Less time to look up and think, no kind of run-up and a backlift so short that it barely got off the grass. An extraordinary goal.

Newcastle meddling in the wrong places

We can talk all day about the best atmosphere in the Premier League.

Leeds, for example, was a little disappointing yesterday, given the nature of the opposition.

I am surprised, though, to learn through colleague Craig Hope’s match report that Newcastle are now playing a revamped and slightly gentler version of local anthem Blaydon Races before kick-off.

Newcastle say they wished ‘to preserve the song’s legacy while strengthening its impact inside the stadium’.

Having listened to that song on endless occasions since first setting foot inside St James’ Park in 1998, I am not sure it needed to be any stronger.

The team, on the other hand…