Former Manchester United striker Louis Saha has challenged Benjamin Sesko to score 30 goals this season, a total the Slovenian has never reached before. Saha says the 23-year-old needs to hit that mark as he builds on a promising first year at Old Trafford.
Sesko's first season at United
Sesko was eased into action under Ruben Amorim after joining from RB Leipzig in a deal worth £66.4million plus add-ons. He found his groove after Amorim's exit, ending the campaign with 11 goals in the league and 12 in all competitions, with nine of those coming after Christmas.
That figure was short of the career-best 21 he scored in his final season in Germany. However, Saha has called on the 23-year-old to step up in a big way and spoken about how his team-mates can help.
Saha's demands and support
“His team mates need to understand the types of passes that he likes and this is the type of movement that he does,” Saha told betarades.gr. “It’s important to create those links with the likes of [Bryan] Mbeumo, with the likes of Amad and [Matheus] Cunha and Bruno Fernandes.”
“United need the communication to be spot on because he needs to score 30 goals. But he also needs to play. He needs to show that he's technical enough to score his own goals as well.”
“Sesko would have to score 25 goals in the Premier League and the rest of the team will have to fight and work very hard to do it and I still need to see the first ten games to see if the pre-season has done the magic they need.”
Pre-season concerns and Rashford's return
Saha also stressed that Sesko can't do everything on his own, saying: "When I played we had a player like Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo who can do their own magic and they will be fine. He is not the same, so he needs a bit of support from his team mates."
The goal target might be seen as ambitious considering Sesko's lack of pre-season action. The striker picked up an injury at the end of last season and hasn't been involved in any of United's friendlies heading into the upcoming campaign but could return to action before the end of August.
United rounded off their pre-season campaign with a 4-2 defeat to AC Milan in Wroclaw. Sesko's fellow forward Marcus Rashford got his first minutes since returning from World Cup duty, with the England international potentially having a part to play at Old Trafford this term after spending last season on loan at Barcelona.
"To be honest, we're really calm, we just treat it like anybody else coming into the group and there's obviously this slight twist that he knows the club as well as anybody and that's a real positive, you know?" Carrick said of Rashford. "He's been here all his career, all his life before the last 18 months or so, to understand what it means. So that side of things is natural, that's a given."
