Pre-season results are famously unreliable—nobody remembers a strong July when the Premier League table gets serious in October. But with a new-look midfield, a permanent manager building his first full campaign, and a fanbase desperate for signs of progress, United's four warm-up games this summer have carried a little more weight than usual. Here's how the first three have gone and what to watch for as the final two friendlies close out preparations before the Hull City season opener on August 22.
Wrexham 1-0 Manchester United — Helsinki, July 18
Grade: D
Not the start anyone wanted. A first-choice-light United side was beaten by a Championship club in the opening warm-up game in Helsinki. On its own, a preseason defeat to lower-league opposition means very little—these games are as much about conditioning and combinations as results—but it's never the ideal way to kick off a summer, and it briefly threatened to overshadow all the positive noise around Carrick's permanent appointment.
The more useful takeaway than the scoreline was fitness and rustiness. Early-summer friendlies are rarely representative of where a squad's shape or sharpness will land by the time the season actually starts, and this one was no exception.
Manchester United 5-0 Rosenborg — Norway, July
Grade: A-
A much-needed response. United put five past the Norwegian side, with Joshua Zirkzee's contribution standing out as the pick of the goals. It was the kind of comfortable, expressive win preseason is supposed to produce—attacking players getting minutes together, confidence rebuilding, and an early look at how some of the new arrivals might combine with the existing squad.
Results like this are easy to write off too, of course. But after the Wrexham setback, it mattered that United responded with a performance that actually looked like a team building something, rather than one still shaking off the summer break.
Manchester United 2-1 Atletico Madrid — Stockholm, August 1
Grade: A
The most encouraging performance of the summer so far. Atletico—fourth in La Liga last season and a genuinely difficult side to break down—took an early lead through Arnau Ortiz, but United dominated for long stretches and were rewarded with a Bryan Mbeumo brace, a penalty conversion followed by a composed finish set up by Jack Fletcher.
What stood out here wasn't just the result but the performance underneath it. Mason Mount was singled out as one of the standout performers, reportedly forming an encouraging partnership with new signing Andrey Santos in midfield — exactly the kind of early chemistry Carrick will want to see given how much turnover there's been in that area of the pitch this summer. There was also a nice moment for the academy, with 15-year-old JJ Gabriel making his senior debut off the bench. For a club that's leaned so heavily on academy promotion in recent years, that's a detail worth paying attention to.
If pre-season form means anything at all, beating a side of Atletico's quality — and doing it by dominating rather than grinding it out — is the most legitimate signal so far that Carrick's group is building real form heading into the new season.
Still to Come
Paris Saint-Germain — Gothenburg, August 8 The standout fixture of the summer. PSG arrive as European champions, and while both sides are likely to be missing players who featured at the World Cup, a strong showing against a team of that calibre would be the clearest statement yet of where this United side is at. It's also a fixture with a personal subplot for United fans given how far the club still has to climb to be considered in the same conversation as Europe's best.
Leeds United — Dublin, August 12 Croke Park hosts what may end up being the most passionately supported of the four friendlies, given how large both clubs' fanbases are in Ireland. Result aside, this one is likely to be more about final squad rotation and fitness building before the derby-adjacent intensity of a competitive Premier League fixture list begins.
AC Milan — Wrocław, August 15 The most curious fixture on paper, with former United boss Ruben Amorim now in the away dugout. There's no getting around the storyline here—this is Carrick's side against the manager he replaced in January, and while nobody will pretend a preseason friendly settles anything, it's the one game on the schedule with a genuine narrative hook heading into kick-off.
The Overall Picture So Far
One bad night in Helsinki aside, this has been a solid pre-season for United. The Atletico win in particular offered real, tangible signs—not just results but performance and early signs of midfield chemistry—that Carrick's side is building something more substantial than last season's second-half bounce. Two tough tests remain before the games start to matter, against a European champion and a former manager with something to prove. How United responds to both should tell us a great deal about whether the optimism building around Old Trafford this summer is warranted.
What's your read on the preseason so far—genuine signs of progress, or too early to tell? Let me know in the comments.
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