Marcus Rashford ‘highly likely’ to miss remainder of Aston Villa spell as ‘focus’ switches elsewhere

David Ornstein has revealed it’s ‘highly likely’ that Marcus Rashford won’t be able to feature for Aston Villa again this season, so he’s going to focus on another side.

Rashford has found his feet again at Aston Villa after Manchester United boss Ruben Amorim stopped him from starring at Old Trafford. Since moving in January, the forward has four goals and six assists in a Villa shirt.

But he was absent from Villa’s FA Cup semi-final against Crystal Palace at the weekend due to a hamstring injury. He had scored twice and assisted once in the previous two rounds for Villa, but without him, they were beaten 3-0 by the Eagles.

Insider Ornstein has given an update on Rashford’s season which looks bleak. Writing for The Athletic, he states Rashford is ‘expected’ to miss the rest of the season.

The penultimate game of the season against Tottenham – as he’s unable to play the final game given it’s against parent club Manchester United – has not been ‘ruled out’ but Ornstein states it’s ‘highly likely’ Rashford’s season is over.

As such, it’s stated the forward will now ‘focus on getting fit’ for England’s next games in June. The first of those is a World Cup qualifier against Andorra, and that Rashford started in the last two World Cup qualifiers suggests he’d be in Thomas Tuchel’s plans for the next.

But Unai Emery’s plans at Villa may not be certain given Rashford’s injury. He suggested he wanted to make a decision at the end of the season about signing the forward permanently, expecting to get the rest of the allocated games to see him.

“It depends on the circumstances for now and the next weeks,” he said.

Rashford has been a useful asset for Villa so far, but that could have just been a purple patch, and now the club have no way of seeing if there’d be a drop off.

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As such, it remains to be seen if Villa will trigger their £40million option for the forward, or if they’ll allow him to return to United.

If that happens, there will be clubs waiting in the wings to snatch him. Of late, there’s been speculation over a move to Barcelona, with it suggested Rashford would like to move there, and a report stating Barca want to focus their efforts on the Englishman this summer.

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