The most telling example of the size of the job Ralf Rangnick has on his hands at Manchester United wasn’t during the defeat to Wolves, a game where United were outfought, out-thought and outplayed. It wasn’t during the draw at Newcastle, where United should have been beaten by a team that will only stay in the division if they buy well under their new wealthy backers. The most alarming sign came during United’s shaky win over Aston Villa, at a moment where the game should have been put to bed. Mason Greenwood scampered away down the right flank during a rare counter-attack, in a period where United were under severe pressure from Villa. He whipped in a low cross which Emi Martinez could only parry, and he parried directly into the danger zone where the lethal Rashford lay in wait to make it 2-0. Game over. Except…..
I have watched the clip of this passage of play several times and I am still no nearer to understanding what happened next. Rashford just….stops, with the ball spilled directly in front of Martinez and with Tyrone Mings briefly wrong-footed. It wasn’t a sure thing that he would finish the chance. Mings and Martinez probably get there around the same time as Rashford does at full pelt. Somebody is probably going to get clattered as a result. We will never know, because Rashford stood still, and when the ball was gathered, trudged back towards his own goal, defeated without trying.
England has always been a bit different to the other top leagues in mainland Europe in terms of how fans view players, and how they view the game itself. In leagues such as Serie A and La Liga, technical ability is the be all and end all. Fans want to see players that will get them out of their seats with a beautiful pass, or a dazzling piece of skill. This is not to say that fans in England don’t also want this, but the priorities are slightly different. A player who is not technically up to scratch will not win many fans on the continent. In England, to be less technically proficient is not automatically fatal. From the top level to the bottom of English football, fans will be forgiving to a player who can’t pass like Xavi, score like Lewandowski or dribble like Salah, as long as they never commit the cardinal sin of ‘not giving 100%’. Many cult heroes in English football have been ungainly, technically limited players who ‘got it’ at a club and immersed themselves in the fan culture, or would be the type who would ‘die for 3 points’. This is seen in teams fighting relegation where technically gifted players are left on the bench – “We can’t afford passengers, who are the lads you want in the trenches with you?”. This is also seen at every penalty shootout – “Who do you want taking this, who are the characters in this squad?”
Marcus Rashford’s recent history with penalties is well known. It is fair to say that he bore the brunt of his penalty miss at the European Championship final much more so than Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka in some ways. All were the subject of general criticism and appalling racial abuse following their misses, but Rashford got more. He got more because he was the player who had transcended the sport in the previous year, who had forced the UK government into a policy change to feed impoverished children, and had become a cultural icon in Britain by highlighting the inequities of the policy of the Conservative government. In doing so, he created a subsection of right wing critics for himself determined to see him fail so that they could say he should ‘stick to the football’. The Twitter trolls disgustingly came for all three players using racial language that has no place in society. The accounts with blue ticks and ‘MP’ following their name also came for Marcus Rashford.
It’s clear to see that Rashford hasn’t been the same since. Last year, Rashford scored 21 goals despite having a relatively poor season performance wise – having watched United all season, it’s still a mystery to me how he even reached half that number. He was playing hurt, with a long standing back injury, and put in some performances that could only be described as awful, with the Europa League final being the worst of them all. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was not keen on rotating players unless forced to do so, and there is a strong argument that this has affected both Rashford and Bruno Fernandes, another player who has had an insane workload in the past two years and now looks a shadow of his former self. Both of them appear to be suffering from burnout.
Situations make players. A good situation can turn an otherwise ordinary player into a world beater. Victor Moses in the past two years has had a loan to Fenerbahce, a bit part loan spell at Inter Milan, and finally a loan to Spartak Moscow that was made permanent. However, in the right situation, at the right team under the right manager, he was transformed from an average Premier League winger into a revolutionary wing-back, and for a season the best in the world in his position. Fredi Kanouté went from an average Premier League striker to the most lethal hitman Sevilla have ever known, picking up two UEFA Cups along the way. Sebastian Haller went from West Ham flop to one of Europe’s best strikers almost overnight. Even the two best players in the Premier League over the past few years, Mo Salah and Kevin De Bruyne, were stagnating on the Chelsea bench before moving abroad and reinventing themselves. The talent gap between top players can sometimes be overstated and the reason why one player is considered better than another is often more complicated than talent alone – which is why rather than leading the line for Ireland, Aaron Connolly wasn’t picked in the last squad. Sometimes players thrive in an environment suited to them and sometimes they do not.
Situations can also break players. We will never know how many Salahs or De Bruynes didn’t make it because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and never recovered – there have been plenty that had the talent to reach those heights, but there is a reason why so few actually do. Injuries can play a role, a player can shine at a lesser club and then become ‘just another player’ at a bigger one, a manager might simply not like a player, a player could become homesick, or any number of things could happen. There are infinitely more variables that lead to a player not making it than making it.
Rashford himself is a good example of talent meeting opportunity. He was not among the most hyped prospects in the Manchester United academy. Ravel Morrison, Timothy Fosu-Mensah, Nick Powell, Paul Pogba and even James Wilson had more ‘buzz’ about them than Rashford did prior to making a first team debut. Indeed, even in the season Rashford debuted, he had to wait for his debut behind players such as Tyler Blackett (now at FC Cincinnati), Paddy McNair (now at Middlesbrough), Cameron Borthwick-Jackson (now at Burton Albion), and Reece James (no, not that Reece James. United’s Reece James is now at Blackpool). Rashford wouldn’t have gotten his debut at all had Anthony Martial not injured himself in the warm-up against FC Midtyjlland. But Martial did get injured, Rashford started in his place, scored two goals and the rest is history.
It all seemed like a dream come true for so long, a real Roy of the Rovers story. That first season, everything Rashford touched seemed to hit the back of the net. A Manchester lad, a gem sitting in the academy, a natural finisher, a speed demon, a dazzling dribbler, coming from nowhere he seemed to have it all. And to this day, he can still look like a player who has it all. The dribbling of a young Cristiano Ronaldo, the finishing instincts of Ruud van Nistelrooy, the playmaking ability of his teammate Bruno Fernandes. And yet, he finds himself at a crossroads.
Rashford is a sensitive lad – you need only look at his social media to see that. He cares and cares deeply. He took on a role nobody expected of him last year, to ensure kids would grow up having more than he did, and gained global admiration for this (I think I’ll be waiting a long time before I see Liverpool fans seriously debate giving a United player a standing ovation coming out at Anfield again). He has played well through a period of serious turmoil for United, reaching a level that is probably best described as one level below world class. Everyone expected him to progress to that next level. And yet he has regressed and regressed alarmingly. He has struggled with injuries. In more ways than one, both on and off the pitch he has taken the weight of a divided nation on his shoulders, with all the admiration and criticism that brings. His football has suffered as a result of all of this. It looks like he himself has seriously suffered as a result of all of this. This is not to say that he should ‘focus on his football’ – he should focus on himself, first and foremost. Something is clearly wrong with Marcus Rashford right now, and given how much he has managed to fit in to his relatively short career, it is little surprise that he looks deeply exhausted, physically and mentally.
In many ways, Rashford encapsulates the problems with Manchester United. He is a left winger – but is he? It certainly plays to his dribbling strengths, but he hasn’t always looked natural in the position and he has looked to be a square peg in a round hole at times, used there by necessity rather than design. He can rinse experienced international defenders for fun, or he can make errors performing the simplest of passes. He can strike a free kick into the top corner from 35 yards, or put a one-on-one chance several metres wide. He can often do all of this in the same game. It is clear that Rashford has the talent to become one of the best attackers of his generation, but this also leaves him open for more scrutiny. A player not putting in effort proportionate to his talent is always going to come in for the harshest criticism in England rather than a player who simply doesn’t have the skill, and when Rashford was substituted against Villa, more than a few ironic cheers went up from the Stretford End.
Playing within himself, head down, with a loss of belief, unsure of what his proper role is in this squad, accused of not being primarily focused on his football – this could be several Manchester United players, but none more so than Rashford. He has stratospheric talent that he is not coming anywhere close to showing right now. Everyone knows what he could be, which gives his fans and detractors even less patience for what he currently is. He looks like a microcosm of the squad itself.
If Rangnick can get Rashford playing, it may well serve as a blueprint for how to revive a shaky squad. What happens next could be defining for both player and manager. In any case, both Rangnick and Rashford have a hell of a job on their hands here.
Adjudged Offside 