Michael Carrick Eyes Patrick Dorgu as Left-Back Solution

Michael Carrick ready to roll the dice on 'new signing' Patrick Dorgu at left-back

Manchester United spent deadline day chasing a left-back. They may end up finding one on their own training pitch.

Patrick Dorgu, spoken about by Michael Carrick as “almost like a new signing” after his return from injury, is being quietly lined up as a potential solution to United’s most obvious hole.

From touchline to touch-tight

United’s summer ended with a whimper in one key area. Late moves for Alejandro Balde and Rayan Ait-Nouri went nowhere, and when the window shut on Tuesday night, Carrick was left with one recognised left-back: Luke Shaw.

Behind him? A patchwork of possibilities. Noussair Mazraoui can shuffle across. Diogo Dalot has done a job there before. But the name that keeps coming back is Dorgu, the 21-year-old Dane who has already lived a few different lives down the left flank.

Under Carrick so far, he has been a winger. Four starts, bright cameos, direct running. Before that, at Sporting with Ruben Amorim, he learned the demands of a wing-back. Go back further, to Lecce, and you find the role that might yet define his United career. He was a left-back in Serie A when United paid £25million to bring him to Old Trafford in January 2025.

Carrick hasn’t forgotten.

“He can certainly play there. He has done, without doubt,” the United manager said. “I’m not sitting here saying he can’t do that. It’s just the way we’ve been since I’ve been here.”

Almost like a new player

Injuries have masked Dorgu’s versatility. He missed a large stretch of last season with a hamstring problem, limiting him to just three or four appearances under Carrick.

“He actually has been injured, unfortunately, for some time,” Carrick explained. “You could almost argue that he played three or four times for us last season, so for me, he’s almost like a new player, you know, to have, and it’s almost like a new signing in some ways because he’s added so much to the group.”

That freshness has been obvious early this campaign. Dorgu started on the wing at Hull City on the opening day before dropping to the bench for the win over Ipswich, a sign of both the competition out wide and the manager’s willingness to manage his minutes carefully.

The squad is heavy with wide forwards. It is not heavy with full-backs. That imbalance is why every training session now doubles as an audition.

Denmark hints and United needs

Dorgu’s attacking instincts are not in doubt. For Denmark in June, he played off the right wing and scored a superb goal, the kind of finish that underlines why Carrick has trusted him high up the pitch.

“He's played off the right for Denmark, scored a great goal in the summer playing off the right in a forward position,” Carrick said. “He can play left-back. He's that type where he can do a number of things. I'm certainly not saying he can't do that at all.”

The key line there is not about the goal. It is about the options. Carrick has a player who has operated as a winger, a wing-back and a left-back before his 22nd birthday. In a squad short of specialist cover, that flexibility is gold.

“It's something he can, we just haven't had to explore that,” Carrick added. “At some point, we might have to, at some point he might do that. He can do that, absolutely no problem. There are times in training when he does it.”

Those “times in training” suddenly matter a lot more now the window has closed.

A calculated gamble

Shaw remains the first choice and the standard. But his injury record means any season-long plan that doesn’t include a contingency is fantasy. United tried to buy that contingency. They failed. The solution may now be to grow it.

“And then he's only young, being such a young age and having the attributes that he's got, we've just got to keep trying to get the most out of him,” Carrick said.

The attributes are clear: pace, aggression, comfort on the ball, and the experience of defending space from deeper positions in Italy. The question is not whether Dorgu can play left-back. He has already done it. The question is when Carrick decides the time is right to push him back and trust him there in a Premier League run.

United’s recruitment team spent the summer scouring Europe for a left-back. Carrick might now discover the most important defensive addition of their season was already wearing the shirt.