FOR several seasons now Marcus Rashford’s future at Manchester United has looked doomed.
In an interview with football journalist Henry Winter earlier this week, the England international admitted as much. The striker told Winter he was ready for a new challenge.
Starting three games and being benched for the other three in Ruben Amorim’s first six matches in charge at United was sufficient evidence for the player to feel his future lies away from Old Trafford.
In 426 appearances for the club, he’s scored 138 goals. He is 12th in the club’s all-time scoring list. Favourable stats for the 27-year-old perhaps - but the numbers don’t always reveal the full story.
Rashford never quite convinced throughout his time at United. And he had everything going for him. Everyone wants a homegrown talent to graduate to the first team and outshine all the big stars bought in by the club - and Rashford certainly had many supporters among the Manchester public and English media.
His charity work merely reinforced the high esteem he was held in. But when you strip everything back, was Rashford ever the answer to United’s striking woes?
Perhaps he would have flourished in better Manchester United teams of the past. In a different era, perhaps he would have scored more goals. Or perhaps he wouldn’t have got in previous United teams.
Rashford has been given the benefit of the doubt on so many occasions and there was this persistent, albeit inarticulate feeling among United fans that he would come good.
But no matter how the stats look and even after that 2022/23 season where he bagged 30 goals, Rashford was never going to come good because, among other things, he was never a clinical enough finisher.
He needed too many chances to convert one.
In one-on-one situations there were strikers you always fancied would score.
Rashford was never in that bracket. He was too erratic.
In most positions on the field, you can evolve and become better - goalkeeper, full-back, central defender, midfielder.
With strikers, it’s different. You can tell from a distance out who is a marquee scorer and who is not. You don’t evolve from a hit-or-miss striker to a dead-eyed assassin. That transformational path simply doesn’t exist.
Darwin Nunez at Liverpool is a classic example.
It’s unlikely Nunez will ever improve sufficiently to be anything other than a back-up striker at Anfield.
Players like Nunez and Rashford will have purple patches in their careers but it’s what happens either side of those purple patches that are the problem.
Rashford is 27 years of age, supposedly approaching his peak years but it’s hard to see how he improves no matter where he plays his football.
Strikers of Rashford’s ilk will have uplifting periods in their careers but will always lack the consistency to lead teams to league titles.
When Rashford leaves Old Trafford – and it seems likely following his exit interview with Henry Winter – his legacy won’t be the 138 goals. It will be he didn’t run enough and that he lacked the requisite mentality to be a top player.
Imagine that being part of your legacy: didn’t try hard enough.
He was one of the causes rather than one of the symptoms of declining standards at Old Trafford in the post-Alex Ferguson era.
Since penning a £300,000 per week five-year deal in July 2023 after his best season Rashford’s career has nose-dived into somewhere between barely mediocre to downright poor.
There are reams of footage where Rashford saunters around in games and shows a healthy ambivalence to hard work and putting opposition defenders under pressure.
In this day and age, where everything is analysed and dissected, one thing players can’t get away with is a lack of effort.
Rashford would sulk in games because he was being played wide rather than his preferred central striker position.
Already, Amorim’s team selections have suggested he doesn’t believe Rashford is good enough for the coveted role.
In explaining his decision to drop Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho for last Sunday’s dramatic derby win over Man City, Amorim wasn’t in the least bit cryptic over why the pair were left out.
“The performance in training, the way you eat, the way you push your team-mates - everything is important at the beginning of something. When people in your club are losing their jobs, we have to put the standards really high.”
For a time, Garnacho was being hailed as something resembling a bonafide Manchester United player – but he was being compared to one of the worst squads ever assembled at the club.
Garnacho was another player with exaggerated value and whose work-rate came under scrutiny.
Many fans can accept inconsistency from players especially in difficult periods for the club, but what they can’t tolerate are young millionaire footballers flagrantly besmirching the badge - kissing it one week and failing to break sweat for it the next.
Amorim is grappling with one of the biggest managerial challenges in world football right now.
In the early days, former boss Erik ten Hag showed similar intolerance to poor work-rate. After watching his side crumble in a 4-0 defeat to Brentford at the beginning of the 2022/23 season, he took the players on a 14k run the following day.
It was an encouraging start by the Dutchman but his player recruitment and tactical nous were his downfall.
The hope now for United fans is Amorim displays the same intolerance to poor work rate, has a clear identity in mind for the team and starts weeding out those who’ve pushed standards in the wrong direction at Old Trafford, starting with Rashford.
