Marcus Rashford is *the* ‘worry’ for Ratcliffe as Man Utd refuse to ‘nail him’ like Souness would…
Sir Jim Ratcliffe is faced with a crumbling down stadium, needs to employ a sporting director and various senior figures besides, has the Mason Greenwood decision to make, may well need to find a new manager, and has as good as promised the Manchester United fans that they will be challenging for the biggest trophies in three years. But Graeme Souness reckons the worry for the British billionaire is Marcus Rashford.
OK, we’re being a tad facetious; it’s what Rashford represents that’s the problem according to Souness, who began writing his Daily Mail column about Ratcliffe’s takeover and his first interview as minority shareholder (which featured a number of red flags he could have focused on) but quickly made it about his favourite topic: the character – or rather lack of it – of The Modern Footballer.
‘There was footage last week of Marcus Rashford going through the motions of trying to press Luton Town’s Ross Barkley. Ross almost walked past him. Rashford is a senior player, an England international. That action, that standard, would suggest he does that in training and neither his teammates or coaching staff have nailed him for it. That’s the worry for Ratcliffe. Have United got players who take responsibility, carry the flag into battle and are prepared to fall out with teammates?’
Admittedly the clip Souness is talking about, which blew up on social media, didn’t look great, but look at most footballers in isolation for a few seconds and they can be made to look a bit daft or lazy. And Rashford was really good against Luton, arguably United’s best player other than Rasmus Hojlund, mainly with the ball – as you would expect – but he also made a number of defensive interventions, tackling, tracking runners and doing the donkey work he didn’t do in that one specific instance that Souness has decided is the moment on which we can base Rashford’s character upon. He was jogging after Ross Barkley so he doesn’t give a sh*t in training? What nonsense.
‘The general problem today is you have players who earn that much money they think they’re all-important and never have a bad game because of the people who surround them. When the pressure starts, they are more than happy for the manager to take all the flak and, in the difficult times, will quickly lay blame at the manager’s door.’
Love the ‘general problem’ here, mainly because it removes all need for evidence or examples of what he’s claiming, which is entirely baseless and does little else but remind of us one of Souness’ greatest bugbears: that current footballers earn a hell of a lot more money than he did.