The fallout on Saturday's defeat seems to have largely fallen on 2 players: Martial & Rashford. Now, there's no denying Marcus is the media's darling as it's taken up to this week for the media to publicly call him out despite us fans recognizing the bad performances and an even worse attitude from the start of the season. He's been given every benefit of the doubt by fans, teammates, and his manager, probably due to last season's performances. I'm sure Marcus will come good again at some point but it's going to take a lot for fans to forget this. Especially as he's pulled this move before during Ralf Rangnick's time. At the time most on here blamed Ragnick for being a terrible manager plus he needed back surgery (or was coming back from back surgery). Again given due benefit of the doubt.
I just listened to Graeme Souness and Talk Sport claim that Martial is symbolic of all that's been wrong at Man United for a decade all while excusing Rashford. A decade!!! Won't that mean the issue predates Martial ffs! I saw Jamie Carragher criticize Rashford by saying he's now become Martial. Roy Keane then piled on about a couple of times Martial couldn't hold onto the ball in the first half - Sure he lost possession but you can argue holding up the ball and bringing others into play is pretty much what Martial does best these days and even his avid detractors will grant him that. The Martial thread gets double the posts when he has a bad game than a good one. Typically filled with posts echoing the same statements as Souness and co.
You often hear things like player X being at the club for X years shows how far the club standards have dropped. It's almost always the same players. We all claimed it was Pogba, then it was Fred whose good games ironically often became a symbol of how standards have dropped. Fred left and we are arguably worse. So it wasn't Fred, was it? Martial too is going to leave at the end of the season and we'll certainly move on to the next player.
Martial is just a cheap scapegoat because he doesn't fit into the British culturally accepted model of running and putting yourself about = working hard. We as fans can only relate to the game of football with one thing: working hard. Most of us, if given the chance to play for United will die running for this club for 1% of 250k/wk so we can't imagine how any player, given that privilege, will simply not work hard. I argue one of the reasons Rashford, until lately, has had a free pass from the media is because he' runs more.
Seeing Martial play these days will make you think he's a 33-year-old winding down his career. Yet he is 27 and supposedly meant to be at the peak of his career. So picture yourself in his shoes. You are bought as an 18/19-year-old for world record money a manager with a clear structure of play, boring as it may have been, laid the foundations enough for you to have an outstanding season (by any measure when looking at a teenager playing his first season in a new country). That manager is then swiftly sacked after winning a trophy and replaced by Jose, a manager whose first action was to take your shirt number away. (Trivial of course but imagine coming in to work to find your boss gave your office to the new guy without telling you beforehand. Then try to kick you out of the company for being mentally weak because you were not happy about the decision). Yet still you get the work done, perhaps not at your best levels but still good enough for a young player. Jose is duly sacked and in comes Ole, who convinces you to play through pain and injuries and it works. You have your best season in your career but it comes at a cost: you are now constantly injured and will spend the next 3 years in and out of the physio room. You are now clearly holding back because you do not want to get injured and the constant injuries have also robbed you of the attributes that made you good. Now you have just become a flag bearer of the failures of the club.
Members on this forum will have you believe Martial's last 3 seasons are indicative of all his time here. We pretend as though at the time of his signing the current 5-year contract he was performing as bad as he is now, that he wasn't a 22-year-old with still bags of potential. We can argue about whether he deserved to earn 250k a week but that debate is all based on hindsight. If he had reached or superseded his potential, no one would be talking about the money. Some players earn more than him while literally being at home and they haven't been flagged as symptomatic of the club's downfall.
There's a reason why there are still Martial FC rebel factions on this forum and why the Martial "50 million down the drain" chant still gets sung by fans whenever he scores despite that becoming
a rarity these days. It's because most fans recognize that that's the quality all Man United players should possess but all we can now do is lament how our most physically shot and "mentally weak" player somehow enables the team to play better more often than not, and still happens to be the player with the best footballing IQ and technical attributes in the team.
This is less an issue with Martial's lack of intensity in the high press but more shows the lack of forethought and team building that has plagued this club for a decade.
Edit: In Martial's first 5 seasons (pre-injury crisis) he only failed to reach double-figure goals in Jose's 1st season. Overall he got 71 goals in 222 appearances in that time. Is this genuinely a bad record for a striker under the age of 24 who mainly plays on the wing or is revisionist history kicking in for everyone and we all pretending those early years never happened?
I just listened to Graeme Souness and Talk Sport claim that Martial is symbolic of all that's been wrong at Man United for a decade all while excusing Rashford. A decade!!! Won't that mean the issue predates Martial ffs! I saw Jamie Carragher criticize Rashford by saying he's now become Martial. Roy Keane then piled on about a couple of times Martial couldn't hold onto the ball in the first half - Sure he lost possession but you can argue holding up the ball and bringing others into play is pretty much what Martial does best these days and even his avid detractors will grant him that. The Martial thread gets double the posts when he has a bad game than a good one. Typically filled with posts echoing the same statements as Souness and co.
You often hear things like player X being at the club for X years shows how far the club standards have dropped. It's almost always the same players. We all claimed it was Pogba, then it was Fred whose good games ironically often became a symbol of how standards have dropped. Fred left and we are arguably worse. So it wasn't Fred, was it? Martial too is going to leave at the end of the season and we'll certainly move on to the next player.
Martial is just a cheap scapegoat because he doesn't fit into the British culturally accepted model of running and putting yourself about = working hard. We as fans can only relate to the game of football with one thing: working hard. Most of us, if given the chance to play for United will die running for this club for 1% of 250k/wk so we can't imagine how any player, given that privilege, will simply not work hard. I argue one of the reasons Rashford, until lately, has had a free pass from the media is because he' runs more.
Seeing Martial play these days will make you think he's a 33-year-old winding down his career. Yet he is 27 and supposedly meant to be at the peak of his career. So picture yourself in his shoes. You are bought as an 18/19-year-old for world record money a manager with a clear structure of play, boring as it may have been, laid the foundations enough for you to have an outstanding season (by any measure when looking at a teenager playing his first season in a new country). That manager is then swiftly sacked after winning a trophy and replaced by Jose, a manager whose first action was to take your shirt number away. (Trivial of course but imagine coming in to work to find your boss gave your office to the new guy without telling you beforehand. Then try to kick you out of the company for being mentally weak because you were not happy about the decision). Yet still you get the work done, perhaps not at your best levels but still good enough for a young player. Jose is duly sacked and in comes Ole, who convinces you to play through pain and injuries and it works. You have your best season in your career but it comes at a cost: you are now constantly injured and will spend the next 3 years in and out of the physio room. You are now clearly holding back because you do not want to get injured and the constant injuries have also robbed you of the attributes that made you good. Now you have just become a flag bearer of the failures of the club.
Members on this forum will have you believe Martial's last 3 seasons are indicative of all his time here. We pretend as though at the time of his signing the current 5-year contract he was performing as bad as he is now, that he wasn't a 22-year-old with still bags of potential. We can argue about whether he deserved to earn 250k a week but that debate is all based on hindsight. If he had reached or superseded his potential, no one would be talking about the money. Some players earn more than him while literally being at home and they haven't been flagged as symptomatic of the club's downfall.
There's a reason why there are still Martial FC rebel factions on this forum and why the Martial "50 million down the drain" chant still gets sung by fans whenever he scores despite that becoming
a rarity these days. It's because most fans recognize that that's the quality all Man United players should possess but all we can now do is lament how our most physically shot and "mentally weak" player somehow enables the team to play better more often than not, and still happens to be the player with the best footballing IQ and technical attributes in the team.
This is less an issue with Martial's lack of intensity in the high press but more shows the lack of forethought and team building that has plagued this club for a decade.
Edit: In Martial's first 5 seasons (pre-injury crisis) he only failed to reach double-figure goals in Jose's 1st season. Overall he got 71 goals in 222 appearances in that time. Is this genuinely a bad record for a striker under the age of 24 who mainly plays on the wing or is revisionist history kicking in for everyone and we all pretending those early years never happened?
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