\t\t\t4<\/i><\/p>\n
Manchester United\u2019s first pre-season game of the summer ended in a 0-1 defeat at the hands of Championship side Wrexham in Helsinki on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Head coach Michael Carrick selected a senior team for the first-half, which included new signing Andrey Santos, as well as heavy hitters like Harry Maguire, Luke Shaw, and Bryan Mbeumo.<\/p>\n
There were genuinely nice touches from the Brazilian, who dovetailed nicely with Mason Mount in the middle of the park.<\/p>\n
The Welsh team scored in the first half, while in the second half, they barely saw the ball against a youthful-looking United side full of academy wonderkids.<\/p>\n
Wonderkids impressed more than senior stars<\/h5>\n
Players who spent last season out on loan like Radek Vitek, Harry Amass, Toby Collyer, Jacob Devaney, Dan Gore, Ethan Wheatley and Ethan Williams were all seen in action.<\/p>\n
Shea Lacey and Amass caught the eye, as United kept hold of the ball well but hardly showed any impetus to draw level on the day.<\/p>\n
It was a limp performance in the end, but at this stage of pre-season, it is all about getting minutes under the belt while staying injury-free.<\/p>\n
What was particularly intriguing was Carrick\u2019s positioning of two of his senior stars \u2014 Mason Mount and Leny Yoro against the Red Dragons.<\/p>\n
New positions for Mason Mount and Leny Yoro<\/h5>\n
The former Chelsea ace played as a No. 8 alongside Santos, like he did during the last two games of the previous season.<\/p>\n
With the Red Devils struggling to sign that elusive third midfielder, the United No. 7 might need to get used to playing in this new position in the upcoming season.<\/p>\n
Another fascinating positional switch involved Leny Yoro, who was asked to play as a right-back. Currently, the 20-time English league champions do not have a specialist senior option there with both Diogo Dalot and Noussair Mazraoui on break after their World Cup exertions.<\/p>\n
The new boss could have opted to play Jaydan Kamason as a right-back, while asking the Frenchman to start at the heart of the defence in the second half.<\/p>\n
Leny Yoro, the backup plan in case Mazraoui leaves<\/h5>\n
Instead, Yoro was asked to play as the right full-back and he demonstrated his pace and willingness to get up and down the pitch.<\/p>\n
The former Lille star certainly possesses the engine to play there, and with Mazraoui linked with a surprise exit, it will be interesting to see if Carrick sticks to this position for Leny Yoro moving forward this pre-season.<\/p>\n
Feature image Justin Setterfield via Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n The Peoples Person has been one of the world\u2019s leading Man United news sites for over a decade. Follow us on Bluesky: @peoplesperson.bsky.social<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 4 Manchester United\u2019s first pre-season game of the summer ended in a 0-1 defeat at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thepeoplesperson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/affiliate-christmas-campaign-25-1500x300-en-uk-min.png\")
<\/p>\n