Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim accepts £73.7m. Striker Benjamin Sesko has struggled at times during his first few weeks at the club but has been urged not to take criticism from club legends personally.
Sesko has scored two goals in his first 11 games for United.
He last found the net against Sunderland at Old Trafford on October 4 and his performance at Nottingham Forest last weekend led former captain Gary Neville to declare that the Slovenian international was “miles away” compared to fellow newcomers Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo.
Amorim accepts that Neville’s comments have merit. However, he also feels they are missing the context in which Sesko moved to a new league at the age of 22, having spent just two seasons in the Bundesliga with RB Leipzig.
“I’m relaxed,” he said. “[But] He is not relaxed.
“I understand how things are in football and he is going to have difficulties. That is normal. He has no experience here.
“The first impact [is] When everyone says you’re so good, you’re the next big thing and you hear that about Sesko.
“Then you arrive at a club that is the most difficult. If you don’t perform every week, you will hear a lot of things from the club legends, from the experts, from the media, and sometimes they are right.
“Of course, no one likes to hear it, but he struggled a little, and that’s a fact. So let’s accept that.
“It’s hard to hear but it’s not personal. It’s an opinion that’s going to change in three weeks. Anything that’s true today, three weeks from now, could be a lie.”
Sesko is understood to spend a great deal of time at United’s Carrington training ground to understand the levels of performance he is achieving compared to those he needs to achieve.
He often arrives more than 90 minutes before the normal meeting time of 09:45 and doesn’t leave until 16:00, long after most of his teammates.
United sources remain confident they made the right decision in signing Sesko and at the same time sent Rasmus Hojlund on loan to Napoli, despite the Dane having scored four goals in nine appearances for the Italian champions.
“Ben is a little boy, a control freak,” Amorim said.
“He wants to control everything, and he’s not going to control everything.
“He has more potential than I thought. [but] We need to understand how he likes to play and also contribute our ideas.
“I’m pretty calm about that. He’s going to be our long-term striker, but he’s going to have these problems and these obstacles along the way. That’s normal in football.”
