Dwight Yorke has put a 25-goal benchmark on Benjamin Šeško, and he wants that target written into the striker's contract. Yorke told goal.com that Sesko should be scoring 25 for Manchester United, saying he is capable of it and pointing to the work he puts in for the team.

Yorke's benchmark for Sesko

The demand sounds high, but it is coming from a former United striker who knows the club's standards. Sesko was signed from RB Leipzig for £74 million in summer 2025, so the pressure around his output was never going to be subtle. Yorke's view is blunt: he thinks the forward should be delivering at that level now, not slowly edging towards it.

The recent numbers do give some support to the idea that Sesko is building toward a bigger return. He scored 6 goals across his last 10 Premier League appearances in the stats sample, and his best recent rating is 7.9. He also scored once in United's 3-2 win over Liverpool, a sign that he has already produced in one of the bigger games.

The pressure around United's striker line

There is still a fair argument against treating 25 as a normal baseline. Sesko did not score his first goal until September 27, in his seventh appearance, and he finished the campaign in double figures after scoring just two times before the end of the calendar year. That is a decent recovery, but it is not the profile of a forward who has already made elite output routine.

United's wider striker picture is part of the discussion too. Louis Saha said he would like a more senior profile around a mobile forward, the sort of set-up United have historically used well. The club have focused on midfield signings this summer, while Sesko is recovering from a shin issue and Joshua Zirkzee has been leading the line in pre-season. United's last five Premier League results are WWDWW, so the team is not exactly coming at this from a position of crisis.

Yorke has raised the bar sharply, and the evidence suggests Sesko has room to grow into it rather than having already reached it. The next test is simple enough to state: he has to turn the strong spells into a season-long return, starting when United's league fixtures resume.

Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 2 outlets. How we work →