Think you'll find that there are loads of people on here who think we should replace him from the starting 11 with a new signing. Indirectly even, anyone wanting Grealish is pretty much asking to replace either Rashford or Bruno from the starting 11 which we all know is a waste of time (none of the 3 can play on the right and none play as a deeper mids or central strikers, so what's the point?).
The treatment on here of Marcus Rashford
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‘Loads of people?’ Come on. All I have seen is people rightfully discussing competition for him, not calling for us to sell him & purchase a replacement.
I would love to see one example of someone calling for his outright ouster from the team.
Calling for him to be sat / subbed doesn’t mean someone wants him gone.
Are you equating purchasing Grealish with the departure of Rashford? Give your head a wobble, brother. Players can be ‘replaced’ in the starting eleven without being jettisoned from the team. It’s called competition & squad depth. Don’t see such as a bad thing at all.
The treatment of Marcus Rashford has been disgusting since Mourinho's tenure. Go back and check the comments in his performances thread on the first page, it's enough to make you consider giving up on humanity.
Any other club in the PL, or even Europe would love to have him at their club. And despite not being fully fit for the last 2 seasons he has continued to put him body on the line and play week in, week out, continually digging us out of holes we find ourselves in.
I won't even bother to go into how he's a modern day saint.
Anyone questioning his attitude or commitment should be banned, it's an obvious WUM attempt.
Possibly but yours was the first reply in the thread repeating the same old argument about his so called selfishness and that all he does is run down cul-de-sacs and taking yesterday's game as a prime example while he was never going to beat 3 players on his own the 2 or 3 times he tried to, just by trying to he created space for others or won corners. Doing that is far more progressive and trying to make something happen than just passing it back 5 yards to Shaw or Bruno every time when he's got 3 players ahead of him
I thought yesterday he looked the fittest he's done in weeks (annoying he came off with another knock) and while it was far from the perfect game because of that freshness he was far better than the games where he's clearly not been fit and arguably warranted criticism for his performance
Why does this matter? Why should we consider this vis à vis his performance? Are you saying give him a pass on the field due to his off field success?
No one is criticizing his attitude or commitment, many are criticizing his performances.
I didn't say sold. I said replaced from the starting 11, which purchasing Grealish is essentially advocating for (either way, IMO Rashford is a better left winger than Grealish when fit anyway). What I'm saying is that Rashfords spot as our starting left winger is set for the long term as long as he stays fit and doesn't decline (will likely only improve, given that carrying injuries and just turning 23 he's scoring 20+ a season). Arguing over whether we'll sign actual competition for him with a view of making him the rotation option instead of a key player is a waste of time, as hes the face of the club and is locked in as our starting left winger for the next 5+ years easily.
Half of these fans will only rate Rashford the moment the Whole team win us the league.
I dont know what you expect. His performance wasnt all that, then he does really well with his finish and goal. Plenty to improve on like all of our attackers after that match
So, you can’t see how Grealish could potentially propel Rashford like Telles seemingly has Shaw? You don’t see the validity in having legitimate competition at as many positions as possible?
Says something to champion potential complacency over the next few years.
He's a ridiculous talent contributing better than most of our team, and that's when he's clearly not fit and hasn't been right all season. He's a beast and one of the most promising young players in world football. But boy oh boy does he need a bloody long rest so we can see the very best of him again.
Not at all, people can feel free to criticise his performances as much as they like but they should be mindful of a few things:
- He hasn't been fit for the best part of two seasons, according to his people and staff
- He's 23 years old and has improved season on season with his goal tally alone
- He missed the international break through injury yet played yesterday
- He's an attacking expressive, creative player who tries things all the time. Some of it doesn't come off because he isn't Messi, but at least he tries
There was a time when people were saying he 'needed taking down a peg or two' and questioning his ego because he took a couple of 30 yard free kicks and shot. That's how quickly performance critique slides into character assassination in this place, and that is disgraceful.
Yup. So many people on here that can’t look past a goal stat, when we’d be scoring more as a team if they were actually playing to the best of their ability.
He looks massively unfocused in games at the moment.
But, it’s equally as incorrect to inject his off the field actions into a discussion to persist with him when he is having a subpar performance. It’s almost a red herring. This is what irritates many in here, myself included, that his on field performances aren’t objectively discussed. It’s healthy to discuss whether a goal or an assist papers over a 3/10 performance, it’s not healthy to the debate to claim that his stance on assisting those less fortunate than us is deserving of his minutes.
Grealish isn't a player you buy for competition. Shaw is very different. He was playing at an average level for years and wasn't making the step up, along with being injury prone. Rashford is fine. What the club will look to do is fix the positions that are actually problematic (midfield, right wing, striker, Maguires partner). Talking about Rashfords position is a waste of time on so many levels as we have a quality academy product as a starter who scores 20 goals a season and in terms of marketability is the face of the club. Not to mention we also have depth for that position with Martial and Dan James. There is 0 squad building sense in bringing competition in your 2 best positions, and ignoring the remaining 5 positions that don't even have a good enough starter, let alone competition or depth. And no, nobody at the club will purchase someone with the intention of moving Rashford to the right wing long term where he is half the player.
What we'll do is fix the problematic positions with sufficient quality so Rashford can be rested with what we have without being such a big loss because he's the only front 3 player who is actually good enough, with the striker and right winger being most of the time irrelevant this season (Greenwood will be long term striker of course, just generally speaking). Rashfords form suffers as he has to play through every injury and plays as much as physically possible because without him, we completely lack a cutting edge. Greenwood can hopefully step up by the end of the season and help out, but most of the season Cavani/Martial/James/Greenwood have all been pretty irrelevant. So yeah. Advocating us signing Grealish generally means you want to push Rashford to the bench or the right wing. Certain players play every game when fit. Bruno is one, Maguire and Shaw 2 more. Rashford and Wan Bissaka are the other ones with that standing in our squad. Grealish is a player like that too. And nobody is going to spend 100m to push him or Rashford to the right wing or bench.
Class finish yesterday. All round lacked energy and ran down too many blind alleys yesterday but he wasn't the only one. Pogba and Greenwood for example didn't inject any tempo and they weren't carrying knocks, so would be bizarre to single out Rashford.
Expressing displeasure over a players performance is completely valid. Rooney in his prime had a lot of critics going crazy over his performance. It stems from the fact that fans see his (Rahsford's) potential and know he can do even better with making some slight simple changes to his overall game and nothing wrong with that. Maybe it's a coaching issue ? Either ways, he can apply himself make the changes and be amongst greats and real legends like Ronaldo, Giggs etc or have his own status created which maybe above them or below them. It all lies with him.
if he is playing with a constant niggling injury then it is not good at all for him long term. Ole and the team need to manage him and manage him well, playing him to the ground is not the answer. But that doesn't imply drop him from the team!
if he is playing with a constant niggling injury then it is not good at all for him long term. Ole and the team need to manage him and manage him well, playing him to the ground is not the answer. But that doesn't imply drop him from the team!
I guess you haven't looked at the other player threads?
Its the uneveness of it all. He is literally the only striker in the front 3 that scores and everything goes down his side. Hes the only forward Bruno can assist, he brings out the best of Shaw and hes the only front player who tries to force through a goal when we arent playing well. Plus he has been half fit for 2 seasons now. Taking on responsibility and not letting his head drop is a great trait to have but its being used against him. If he wasnt as brave, he would be criticised less.
Shockingly, people don't like players who don't seem to be giving their all - and that's exactly what Rashford has been doing. Put it down to Speculative Injury #24 if you want; but it's been the case statistically for two years now.
He has the biggest luxury role in world football. Nobody - not Neymar, not 36 year old Ronaldo, not 34 year old Messi - has contributed less than Rashford off-ball over the last two years.
He somehow had a game a month ago where he covered less ground than Harry Maguire. Like....how?
He never presses, never tracks back, leaves Shaw 1v1 over and over and over again. He quite literally doesn't even break into a jog out of possession.
He HAS to be productive - hugely so - because he's an outright liability both defensively and in the pressing game.
Don't take it from me though. From Fergie's book:
He has the biggest luxury role in world football. Nobody - not Neymar, not 36 year old Ronaldo, not 34 year old Messi - has contributed less than Rashford off-ball over the last two years.
He somehow had a game a month ago where he covered less ground than Harry Maguire. Like....how?
He never presses, never tracks back, leaves Shaw 1v1 over and over and over again. He quite literally doesn't even break into a jog out of possession.
He HAS to be productive - hugely so - because he's an outright liability both defensively and in the pressing game.
Don't take it from me though. From Fergie's book:
Same reason I'd be happy for Martial to go. He has similarly poor work-rate - although better than Rashford - but is contributing less to back it up.
That’s why no one is seriously saying to focus there over our other glaring deficiencies. But it’s not improper to think that competition wouldn’t be valuable to Rashford at this point in his career.
Does a goal that gets us back into a game ever warrant a 3/10 performance? Or are you looking for a reason to slate him?
What bothers me is there expectation that Rashford should carry us and be one of Europe's elite forwards by now, and if he's not tearing defences a new one, or finishing with aplomb every shot he takes then we must deep dive into his psyche and question the fabric of his existence in a United shirt.
Bottom line. He's injured, has been for a while, he's still scoring goals and digging us out when needed. Slate him if you want but it's daft to slam one of our best players instead of talking about how Bruno has gone completely off the boil, or why Martial hasn't improved in 5 years, or why Cavani is the new Falcao, or what exactly does VDB do?
You genuinely think Marcus Rashford is fully fit and healthy then? The injury stuff is just a cunning plan to deflect from his form? I think people who deny the obvious, their whole point basically collapses. He's obviously not 100%.
Actually he believes that, posted in Rashford's injury thread too saying how it's all PR stunt and if he plays for England then it's obvious it's all bs. Then Rashford pulled out of England NT, not a word on that again.
Thats because Ole wants Marcus further up the pitch to stretch teams on the break. You cant catch sides in behind if he is covering Shaw plus Shaw is good enough to cope withoit someone holding his hand.
Think of the last time you saw Martial or Greenwood get in behind the opposition defence. Now think of Rashford. Our pace on the break is all down to 1 man.
But he rarely puts in a 3/10 performance. Yesterday he wasn’t at his best but was still our best attacker and genuine threat. He was probably a 5.5/6 out of 10 and then popped up with a great goal to get us back in the match so probably an 7.5/8 out of 10 performance overall. By contrast, I thought Cavani was a 2/3, Bruno a 4 and Greenwood a 5 up to that point (although Bruno and Greenwood both finished the match well). I can bet there were people on the thread suggesting he was our worst player though and there will be many who still rated him 3/4 despite his goal, which is why people then push back strongly in the other direction.
His performance yesterday up to goal was most definitely a 3 or 4 out of ten. The goal puts it to 5 or 6 out of ten. It’s raising the average of his floor that is the biggest issue to me, his poor footballing decisions & his lack of consistency cause this. His valleys are outweighing his peaks.
Criticizing a player isn’t always ‘slamming’ that player. Every player on the planet at every level deserves criticism. Rashford is no different.
The criticism would have been ridiculous in the modern era. Becks would have been fine mostly as he was one of the fittest players around, never injured, hard working, performed well week in week out and had good stats as well.
Scholes however would have received a lot of criticism, doesn’t score or assists enough, blah, blah.
Giggs, especially until around 2000/2001/2002 oh my days. Messi level unplayable on his days, but on other days at times predictable, wasteful, average or out injured. He would have received almost as much criticism as Rashford.
Giggs back then actually admitted himself that his consistency was being questioned and he said fair enough but Becks is playing on the other wing and it was just hard for him to keep up with Becks every game.
In no way was he a 5 to 6 before the goal. That’s where he ended up at the end of the match for me. No one is claiming that yesterday was a 3/4 out of ten performance overall.
It’s just mystifying how many can claim the goal negates the mediocre, predictable performance overall that has been reflective of his 2021 portion of the season. Injuries absolutely are playing a part in this, but so are his deficiencies that don’t appear to have been improved upon over the past couple of years.
A 9/10 out of ten performance by anyone has room to be criticized for some facets of it; a 5/6 out of ten performance has much more room for criticism. And rightfully so.
Seriously? What ratings do you give to Bruno and Cavani up to that point - minus scores? I bet your opinion is that Greenwood was better (he wasn’t). People trying to suggest he was a 3/10 performance yesterday is why this type of thread exists. Its madness.
But if he's injured then his decision making is limited to what he can physically do. We've all heard Owen talk about how he would stop sprinting late in his career because he knew his hamstring would go, what if Rashford can't smash the ball because his ankle or hamstring will go again due to not being 100%, so he has to side foot a shot which the keeper saves comfortably?
It's just daft to be calling him out on such situations when he's not fit, it's everything wrong with the way football is viewed today - scrutinise everything brutally in 20/20 hindsight, as if we armchair supporters would do a much better job in the same situation.
He scored a goal yesterday and was largely average for the rest of the match, under the circumstances he did well but not as well as we know he can do when fully fit.
I don't think he's been injured for two straight years, which is where the stats are from...and I think it's reasonable to assume that if he's on the pitch, he's there because he can contribute in all facets of the game.
Also think there's a big difference between playing hurt - which a lot of players are at this point in the season - and playing injured.
If he is playing injured, that's another discussion - a big one about our management.
The fact that he’s picked up another knock after 70 minutes speaks volume. He needs a long rest.
I’d be more worried for him if the whole team was playing well and he looked shit, however, everyone is looking very average.
I’d be more worried for him if the whole team was playing well and he looked shit, however, everyone is looking very average.
Cavani - 2/3 out of ten for the vast majority of the game. 3/10 for the whole game.
Bruno - 3/10 for the first half, ended with a 7/10.
Greenwood - 6/10 for the game
Rashford - 3/4 out of ten until the goal, ended with a 6/10
No one is claiming Rashford was 3/10 for the game. I certainly wasn’t. He was 3/4 out of ten until the goal. I feel the goal puts him to 5/6 out of ten, closer to 6.
He's broken his back, done his ankle in, and had a hamstring injury. Of course he's not been fully fit.
The issue is we have no one anywhere near as effective as he is (looking at you especially Martial) so we can't afford to rest him as long as he can manage his injury and not aggravate it.
His decision making and finishing is dodgy at times, but he’s our second best player with 19 goals and 11 assists. His passing, dribbling and general shooting is excellent. It’s funny how he’s still first choice LW for England over Sancho and Grealish, and that rival players and fans constantly sing his praises. The only people who don’t rate Rashford are some United fans.
Don’t even need to touch on his brilliance off the field. One of the best wingers in the league, yet still has the time to do what he’s doing in regards to food for children in the UK.
Great player. One of my favourites in the team.
Don’t even need to touch on his brilliance off the field. One of the best wingers in the league, yet still has the time to do what he’s doing in regards to food for children in the UK.
Great player. One of my favourites in the team.
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/rashford-playing-through-injury-again.461286/page-7#post-26964892
Said the same as I did here re: playing injured vs playing hurt. Cute of you to memorise my posts though.
He would win leagues and champions leagues playing in a better side. He is the least of our worries and clearly the best attacker at the club (whilst injured)
Obviously criticism is allowed if he plays poorly but that criticism is clearly way over the top. He's obviously been playing through injury the last couple of months and did the same towards the end of last season and that's clearly affecting his form. Yet he still ends up scoring or assisting most games. The problem isn't Rashford, in fact he's basically the least of our problems. The problem is that a half fit Rashford is still the best option for us. We need depth and we need other attackers to start picking it up. We should be able to rest Rashford every once in a while rather than constantly rely on him to play every minute of every game in a more compact season than ever before.
He clearly does have room to improve and he's nowhere near perfect but where would we be without Rashford right now? It wouldn't be good...
He clearly does have room to improve and he's nowhere near perfect but where would we be without Rashford right now? It wouldn't be good...
This only makes sense if he wasnt getting slammed when he was undoubtedly playing well.
Its just non stop. Even when he destroyed a team we were told Martial would have done better, Brexit fc and all that nonsense.
Now that is fecking immature & puerile, to keep slating when a quality performance is put forth.
If one criticizes, one needs to also appreciate.