Rashford and Antony recall options remain fictitious despite new reports and feelings made clear

We’re starting to wonder just how deep into the remaining months of the season certain outlets will still be wringing clicks out of stories saying Man United obviously can’t recall Antony or Marcus Rashford from their loan deals under headlines that nudge, nudge, winkily suggest they could.

Total Recall
This…

Inside the Goodison tunnel bust-up as furious Man United stars clashed with Everton players and James Tarkowski’s foul-mouthed jibe at Harry Maguire, plus the latest on Marcus Rashford and Antony’s recall clauses: MAN UNITED CONFIDENTIAL

…is a very, very MailOnline headline way of saying Marcus Rashford and Antony do not have recall clauses in their current loan deals. The ‘latest’ on those recall clauses is still very much the same as all previous updates over the last three weeks in as much as said recall clauses do not exist, never did exist, never could have existed, and even if they did exist would still be impossible to deploy in any meaningful way.

We’ve done this already, guys. Of course they don’t have recall clauses in short-term January loan deals. It would be bizarre if they did; if United had been interested in recalling them, then they wouldn’t have been loaning them.

But apparently there is still a good deal of mileage in writing yet more stories confirming the obvious and known fact that Antony and Rashford don’t have recall clauses and then putting them under headlines that accidentally suggest that maybe they do in fact have recall clauses.

We look forward to doing this all again next week, or perhaps even tomorrow if United manage to make a mess of things against Ipswich.

Recall it a comeback
And, of course, this ‘new report from the Daily Mail’ gives free rein to every Tom, Dick and Reach Outlet to do the same but with even less effort.

Marcus Rashford and Antony’s loan deals clarified as Man Utd recall option mooted

We’ll moot you, Daily Mirror.

Winter is coming
We’re sticking with Rashford, we’re afraid, because it remains abundantly clear that writing any old sh*t about Marcus Rashford is still very much click central.

And the Express really have written any old sh*t about Marcus Rashford here…

Marcus Rashford has made his feelings towards Man Utd clear after Ruben Amorim treatment

Now, obviously we know and you know that this is not a story that is going to contain any viable content whatsoever. We all know it’s a trick of some kind, it’s just the specifics we need to discover. We all know, for instance, that the one thing Rashford one million per cent will not have done in making clear those feelings is have a pop at United despite the obvious and deliberate tone of that clicky little headline.

At best, you’re clicking on this thinking he’s probably liked an Instagram post from Rasmus Hojlund or some such tishery and fipsy.

At worst, it’s this. We are almost impressed at the sheer brass balls and the fact it made us double and triple-check the publication date to make absolutely sure it was published today.

But despite exiting on far from buoyant terms, having endured a prolonged exile by the order of Ruben Amorim, Rashford has made it clear that there is no ill feeling towards his boyhood club.

Has he now. Go on, then.

In an interview with Henry Winter ahead of his departure…

Wait, no, surely not even the Daily Express – a title that shed the very last vestiges of its dignity sometime in the last century – is going to serve up the quotes from the now infamous Henry Winter interview from last year that kickstarted the whole Rashford Exit Plan and pretend they constitute news over two months later?

…the England international said: “For me, personally, I think I’m ready for a new challenge and the next steps.

They are, you know. They really, really are.

“When I leave, it’s going to be ‘no hard feelings’. You’re not going to have any negative comments from me about Manchester United. That’s me as a person.”

We have no words. No printable words anyway.

Mo problems
There were four Premier League games on Tuesday night, and five more on Wednesday night including Liverpool v Newcastle, Tottenham v Man City and Nottingham Forest v Arsenal.

That is a lot of Actual Football.

So what is the top story on the MailOnline football homepage on Wednesday morning?

RIO’S SALAH SNUB

There is not a sigh deep enough for this sh*t. But on we go.

Rio Ferdinand shuts down talk of Mo Salah being the Premier League’s best ever player – and insists there’s ‘NO CHANCE’ he’s ahead of two legends

Oh good, it’s an entirely subjective GOAT debate that has no objective metrics and comes down entirely to personal opinion and has no right answer and any answer anyone does give amounts to a snub of literally every other Premier League player ever if you want to be a prick about it. Marvellous. Do crack on.

But Ferdinand has ‘rubbished talk of Liverpool’s in-form superstar Mohamed Salah being the Premier League’s greatest ever player’ so he must have really put the boot in to him.

He definitely can’t have just said there’s a couple of other players from the 33 years of Premier League football he thinks are even better. It definitely can’t be that. Can it?

Explaining his view on Salah, Ferdinand continued: ‘Stats-wise and consistency-wise he is in the conversation, in the top three definitely, but in terms of someone who excites me, the maverick, that’s what elevates them for me to be the best.

If calling someone ‘definitely’ the third best footballer the Premier League has ever seen behind Thierry Henry and Cristiano Ronaldo is a snub we are all in trouble.

Money, money, money
Now one of Mediawatch’s pet peeves is the glib way absurd sums of money are trivialised in your modern football, so you will have to forgive us the hypocrisy of what we’re about to do to the Mirror here.

Arsenal splashed out an eye-watering £1.2m on their sunshine trip to Dubai.

Is… is that really eye-watering? For a club and business the size of Arsenal? It isn’t, is it? We can just about accept these sorts of stories at Manchester United where they can be painted against a backdrop of Sir Scrooge McRatcliffe sacking the little people and reducing the canteen menu to very small bowls of gruel.

But not anywhere else, surely. It just isn’t, in elite 21st century football terms, that significant a sum of money. It is a star player’s monthly wage.

And here’s where it falls down. Because at Arsenal the backdrop isn’t regular people getting shafted, it’s this.

That figure might not go down well with some fans who were fuming that the club did not spend a penny in the January transfer window when they were crying out for a striker.

And that doesn’t work at all, does it? If only, instead of gadding about decadently in Dubai, Arsenal had simply bought themselves a £1.2m striker who could fire them to the league title because it is apparently 1988.

The real reason this story exists, of course, is because that Dubai trip is now widely accepted to have been a disaster because Kai Havertz got injured during one of the training sessions. But you know where else he could have got injured during a training session? North London.

The worst part of this story, though, is that John Cross – an Arsenal-focused football journalist of long standing who knows his patch – is painfully aware that he’s writing absolute bollocks. And having written enough pars of that absolute bollocks to appease the algorithmic overlords sets about spending the rest of the piece explaining precisely why and how it is bollocks.

Arsenal put a great deal of emphasis on last season’s trip to Dubai being a huge success in terms of a bonding exercise while it also allowed them to put a bad spell of form behind them and they enjoyed a winning run after they returned home which breathed new life into their season.

On the back of last year, the club emphasised that this season’s trip was factored into the budget and the players, staff and everyone involved enjoyed it and saw it as a major benefit and a valuable bonding exercise.

Seems like that might not be an insane eye-watering use of a million quid, then, for a massive Premier League football club.

But did this disastrous Havertz-knacking trip even in fact cost Arsenal £1.2m at all? When that supposedly eye-watering sum is supposedly the cornerstone of the entire story?

Arsenal do have strong commercial and partner tie-ups in Dubai so sponsorship deals would have helped offset the financial outlay and also strengthen future relationships.

That’s a no, then.