It’s official: Rashford and Man Utd are over
Robin Bairner
- 2 Apr 2022 18:13 BST
- 3 min read
Marcus Rashford need to leave Manchester United in the summer transfer window. If that was not clear before Saturday’s Premier League match with Leicester, it’s amply evident now.
Ralf Rangnick made it clear what he thinks of the England international when he would rather play without a striker rather than deploy the out-of-form forward.
Cristiano Ronaldo missed the match, apparently because of illness, yet instead of calling upon Rashford to fill the void, playmaker Bruno Fernandes was favoured to take his spot.
The 24-year-old’s lack of form this season has been well documented and is borne out by his numbers this season. In 26 appearances, he has just five goals and two assists to his credit. Such figures are not befitting of a player at one of the biggest clubs in the world.
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Rashford’s long decline
Rashford’s problem, though, is that this is no recent phenomenon. Since the start of 2021, he has failed to find anything like his best form. In the last 15 months of Premier League football, he has scored only eight goals.
Rather than going on an upward curve, he is getting worse.
Leicester should have been an open door for him to show what he was capable of given the circumstances. Not only was Ronaldo unavailable, but Rashford had enjoyed two weeks in which he should have been able to rest up and focus on this match due to his absence from the England squad. This was his big chance to bounce back.
Clearly, though, he has not impressed Rangnick in training over the course of the last fortnight. It is a damning indictment of where his game lies in the interim manager’s eyes.
When the German goes upstairs, things are unlikely to get any rosier for the Man Utd academy product. Rangnick is set to be in charge of transfer policy, pulling the strings in terms of who comes and who goes. And guess which player is likely to fall into the latter camp?
Rashford is going to have to pull out all the stops until the end of the season if he is to save his Man Utd career – but with Ronaldo and a manager who does not trust him blocking the way, he may not even have the chance.
