How come nobody posted the ‘I appreciate working with him [Rashford]. He is a fantastic player and a fantastic person. The team miss him, I will miss him, but it is life’ quotes from Hansi Flick? I’m so useless with this linking stuff.
From what I can summarize from my debile memory, Mourinho, Solskjær, Rangnick, Emery, Tuchel and Flick have all been positive about Rashford as a person. They all talked about him as a very good trainer as well.
Mourinho thought him talented, but lacking qualities needed to play as no 9. These eounded like mental qualities. Rangnick thought he could be a world class striker, and alluded to limitations within himself the only thing holding him back. But not for lack of trying. Tuchel praised his talent, and application, but alsoalluded to something holding him back in terms of becoming absolute world class. Yet they all played him, and played him alot - ie Rashford with these limitations, were to all of them not viewed as detrimental to the team, the teams spirit or a bad example. He was at around the level of other good professional footballers he competed favourably with for playing time.
There is really just Erik ten Hag and Amorim who has had trouble with Rashford, among a host of top class managers and coaches. I think it’s clear Rashford was struggling as an individual and as a person during the latter part of Ten Hag era and the few months of Amorim era before he was identified as a problem and cast out. That made a lot of us react negatively against him, and even if Ten Hag and Amorim may be partly to blame, Rashford is surely to blame for that as well.
That doesn’t mean, though, that it’s typical for his personality, or that that’s the kind of man he is. A lot of evidence suggest it isn’t.
I think some people take some of his limitations: Lack of proactive game intelligence, he lacks a bit of natural fighter aggression, and his physical skills has made several managers instruct him to save some sprinting for attacking purposes, or shirk tracking back at times for tactical purposes (they have explicitly said so), and identified it as evidence of chronic ‘bad-appleness’, when the evidence actually clearly undermines that take.
I think the people continuing to regurgitate lazy ‘personality judgements’ of Rashford should get a grip of themselves and open up to that reality sometimes is more complex than is allowed for in a one-liner.
Those who just want to express that his output doesn’t match his salary, or that his play doesn’t match others’ hype of him, or that he has linitations as a player, do so, even if it’s probably said a thousand times (a month) for each point - but I agree.
Though I hope if he comes back to play for Carrick, that he will be treated with the same expectancy that we can have for our players - that they do their best, the gaffer choses who should play, and we assume we are all on the same side unless all evidence (and not just some evidence) points against it.
One is clearly less fairy tale than the other. Undefeated runs are not that uncommon