I WANT Marcus Rashford to succeed, to be the player we know he can be.
But we are now on a slippery slope of performances dropping at Manchester United — and nothing is changing from new manager to new manager.
So, I have to ask him: Do you even want to do this? Do you want to play football?
It’s not an easy game, or an easy life. People think it is because of the amount of money and all that but there is a lot of nonsense that goes on in the background, a lot of stresses.
And I don’t see a scenario in the next few months, or years, where he flips it on his head and all of a sudden comes good.
Or he turns around and says: ‘I’m gonna prove you all wrong’.
That makes me genuinely sad, especially because I know this will be weighing on him mentally long-term.
Can you still get something out of him? I’m not sure. He needs a strict hand on him, but even that doesn’t seem to work sometimes.
He’s 27 — his peak years. He’s got all the attributes you’d want for a modern-day winger or a striker, but he’s currently got the appetite of a 35-year-old.
Compare it to the attitude and desire of Jamie Vardy at 37. It is chalk and cheese.
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Rashford looks like he is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Everything is always everybody else’s fault and his application stinks.
He is still capable of moments. It wouldn’t surprise me if he goes and scores the winner against Manchester City this weekend and then goes missing for the next few weeks.
He knows he can live off these ‘moments’ and nothing more, and that isn’t good enough.
But United have bought this problem on themselves.
They have created this person by continuing to reward rubbish behaviour and performances with massive, unwarranted contracts.
He has been brought through as the academy favourite, the golden boy, yet when adversity hits, he thinks everyone is against him, instead of facing up and focusing on himself.
And it is the same old cycle. A new manager comes in and for three of four games you see a ‘new Rashford’ and then he slips back into his old ways and old form.
He then begins to get dropped. We saw it on Thursday night, subbed off against Viktoria Plzen and already United boss Ruben Amorim looks fed up with him.
Look, I’ve been there. It’s not nice when that is happening.
As a striker you want to be left on to build some momentum, but I was at the Emirates when he came on against Arsenal last week. He was a disgrace.
Amorim summed it up best when he joined, telling Rashford he will get full support but it is up to him as a player, a person.
That’s where the problem lies. Nobody wants Rashford to fail, but if he keeps delivering these substandard performances then we will all keep on saying the same things.
Some people say it is the environment at United that is a negative impact, but that’s a poor excuse.
You don’t see Harry Maguire or Bruno Fernandes acting out or not giving everything, do you?
Another academy graduate like Kobbie Mainoo isn’t acting up because he has good role models around him in his position. He is hungry to improve.
So, at what point do you take responsibility for your own actions and say: It’s on me.
You can only fake it for so long if you are not a hard worker, you’re not sticking to a professional regime and you’re heart isn’t in it any more.
At the moment Rashford is nothing more than an academy symbol of the past, a local lad that United are too scared to move on because of what the reaction from the fan base might be.
But why would anyone in England want to take Rashford on?
Why would boss Mikel Arteta risk ruining all his hard work at Arsenal of building a culture of elite professionals and high standards for him?
Chelsea have a young, energetic squad that could revitalise him, but I reckon most of those players would look at him now and think: Well you’re a waste of time.
And no one is going to pay his current wages — he is rewarded like he is one of the best three players in the Prem yet he wouldn’t get into any of the top SIX starting XIs right now.
If I was advising him, I’d tell him to go abroad but even then I’m not sure how that would go.
I do feel sorry for Marcus, but he has had enough bad examples of players around him, or in his age bracket, who have gone down a similar path.
It should be enough to motivate you not to become one of them, someone like Jesse Lingard.
But Rashford is not seeing the warning signs all around him.
THE blame game has another victim as things go from bad to worse at Old Trafford.
Manchester United’s first sporting director, Dan Ashworth, arrived in the summer and is gone before Christmas.
SunSport exclusively revealed last month that there was trouble at mill.
That the new senior management team were already blaming each other for the mess the club were in.
Chief executive Omar Berrada and Ashworth were trying to wash their hands of it all, claiming they had arrived too late after serving their gardening leave.
New part owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe said making decisions was all down to them. Meanwhile, Jason Wilcox thought it was all a mess under previous boss Erik ten Hag but was part of the team that encouraged him to stay after every other candidate ran for cover.
There is word Ashworth did not favour appointing his successor and new head coach Ruben Amorim, preferring an English manager with more experience in our game. Perhaps that was why ex-England gaffer Gareth Southgate’s name was always mentioned after they worked together at the FA.
Either way, Saturday’s showing against Nottingham Forest, after their second-half capitulation at Arsenal a few days previously, proved too much.
