Forget Adam Wharton: The stats that prove Manchester United's ideal next midfield signing is obvious

You’ll go quite a long way to find a fan or pundit who didn’t think that Manchester United needed to sign a new midfielder over the summer – and even though results have started to show signs of unexpected improvement under Ruben Amorim, the midfield remains an unaddressed concern.

That’s why the gossip columns are filled with stories linking United with Adam Wharton. Or Carlos Baleba. Maybe Morten Hjulmand or Angelo Stiller, depending on who you believe. At this rate, there won’t be a midfielder left in Europe’s top five leagues who hasn’t allegedly been discussed at Old Trafford. But with so many names being thrown about, who should United actually sign – and what kind of midfielder do they actually need?

Why Manchester United need a midfielder who’s the polar opposite of Kobbie Mainoo

One of the fundamental issues undermining Amorim’s tenure has been that his two-man system demands that both of his midfielders are willing and able to cover especially large amounts of territory out of possession. It’s not a job that most midfielders are built to do.

What Amorim needs, in a perfect world, is a pair of midfielders in the mould of N’golo Kanté. What he has is Bruno Fernandes, a willing runner not blessed with the positional nous that comes with being trained as a defensive midfielder, Casemiro, who runs out of steam around the hour mark, and Kobbie Mainoo, a technical player who is much better suited to a compact three-man midfield instead of chasing shadows.

It simply hasn’t worked very well. Manuel Ugarte should be able to do the job on paper but has been short of form for most of his relatively brief career at Manchester United, and that leaves Amorim with players who are willing but not especially able. Without correcting that, it’s hard to imagine that United will be able to get back to the top of the Premier League table for any great length of time.

When United do finally go in search of new signings, then, they need to pick out players who are not only technically sound and capable of shutting down opposing midfielders when out of possession - they need players who have the right combination of fitness, pace and bloody-minded determination to close down large amounts of space.

On the ball, they’ll also need to be comfortable with mid-range passing or with carrying the ball significant distances, as the gaps between United players can be relatively large. Mainoo, for instance, shone under Erik ten Hag because his strength was in quick passing interchanges and short-distance ball-carries, and those were emphasised far more in Ten Hag’s three-man system than they are under Amorim.

So United need a fit, fast midfielder who can make tackles and can find ways to progress play downfield – whether with their passing or with the ball at their feet – and are comfortable in isolated one-on-one situations. So if that’s the shopping list, which of their supposed targets should they sign?

Why Brighton’s Carlos Baleba is probably United’s ideal midfielder

One of the frustrations of trying to compare players’ physical attributes is that data for distance run, sprinting speed and so on is gathered and made available very unevenly. It’s only accessible in some leagues and not others, and much of the information that is gathered is locked behind extremely high paywalls intended to be accessible to professional scouts and the like. We have to work with the scraps.

Still, there is data available on some of the players United are said to be targeting, and combining that with much more freely available stats which match the criteria discussed above – the players’ success rate in one-on-one situations, the number of turnovers they force, their number of successful dribbles and so on – we can start to build a picture of the players on the shortlist and see which are more likely to suit Amorim’s demanding playing style.

In the chart below, we’ve focused on ball-carrying, middle-distance passing, top speed (when available), one-on-one success rate and turnovers forced per match. It’s cherry-picked data and doesn’t offer a full picture, but shines a spotlight on some of the key attributes that four of the names most frequently mentioned – Wharton, Baleba, Stiller and Hjulmand – do or don’t have.

For the sake of fairness and a reasonable sample size, all of the numbers above are taken from the players’ respective 2024/25 league seasons save for the top speeds, which are taken from a combination of official Premier League, Bundesliga and UEFA sources but which are not all taken from the same season. Beggars, sadly, not choosers, and we were unable to find a reliable source for Wharton’s sprinting pace.

As the number show us, Baleba – linked with a move worth £100m or more late in the summer transfer window and still supposedly a player of interest – ticks an awful lot of boxes. He’s comfortably the quickest player here, tops the group in several key areas and doesn’t seem to have any serious weaknesses, at least in terms of the role United would need him to take up.

Wharton, meanwhile, probably isn’t the best fit. While a very hard worker off the ball, his qualities really lie in his use of possession and if he were asked to take up the defensive midfield role in United’s system then his relative lack of defensive polish would be exposed. His mid-range passing, incidentally, is only really lower than the others because he tries a much higher-percentage of high-risk, chance-creating balls. That, again, isn’t really the kind of thing United’s system gives the midfield chances to do – he’s a fabulous player, but a poor fit for Amorim.

Stiller, persistently linked by Sky Sports Germany, is a fine technician and ball-carrier but isn’t the fastest and isn’t as impressive defensively as his supposed rivals for United’s affections, while Hjulmand is our jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. Amorim is familiar with him from their time together at Sporting and the Dane has proven that he can operate in that role, but there’s a valid question as to how far those stats would drop when taking a step up into a tougher league. As Viktor Gyökeres is demonstrating, it’s tougher to cut it in the Premier League than the Primeira Liga.

So on paper, Baleba seems to be precisely what United should be looking for – with only two significant caveats. Firstly, he may well be the most expensive midfielder on the list, and United will surely have other players to sign too. And secondly, he’s been off the boil this season, hasn’t found his best form for Brighton, and had we used his 2025/26 numbers there would be rather less green and considerably more red.

Hopefully – for United’s sake - the numbers can be crunched and Baleba’s form will get back to normal. He’s fast, energetic, highly effective off the ball, can carry it efficiently and his technical qualities are rock solid. He’s precisely what Amorim needs. In theory, at least.