Marcus Rashford

Yeah, fair enough

As for McT vs Pereira, you've hit the nail more or less on the head re. flair. People want to see eleven little Iniestas and Messis running around the pitch doing back heels and rabonas (or whatever the fack they are called), but we know very well you can't build a football team that way and that you need a balance of amongst other things pace, power, grit and determination, calm, experience, tidiness, directness, leadership and flair.

-------------------------------------------------

This x 100!

And despite seeing the evidence time after time, fans keep forgetting that young players tend to be inconsistent - they can have periods when they look deceptively good, they can have prolonged dips in form. It's a fool's game to make pronouncements about them even after they've had a year or more in the first team. But of course we have plenty of fools. Rashford had a pretty ordinary 2018 relative to the raised expectations but it was obviously to early to write him off as another Welbeck. I've no idea whether McT will make it but I do know that players in his mould and at his juncture have both fallen away and soared to unexpected new levels.

He's not the only young striker that has been moved out to the wings to learn more of the game from a technical and tactical perspective.

SAF moved Rooney to the left for a season and even the current manager got shifted to the right wing for a season.

I don't have any problems with Jose moving him there - what I had an issue with was moving him there to play as a second right/left back.

comment by Red the Fred (U5318)
posted 5 hours, 1 minute ago

I think it's a little harsh on Jose to say he f-ed up Rashford development. I think his way he has also contributed to it. Off the ball Rashford also works his socks off for the team and he makes more sensitive decisions than he used to. This comes from the 2 years under Jose.
----------------------------

He always worked his socks off for the team even before Jose joined. All players should make better decisions on the pitch as they mature. You would expect that even without any coaching. Its a bit of a stretch to say that Jose is to thank for any improvement in that area. Especially as he has only really improved his decision making in recent months. Up until then he was still running into a lot of blind alleys, trying to take people on when a pass was the better option, shooting when he should cross etc.

We can't know how Rashford would have developed had he played under a different manager for the last two and a half years. I suspect he'd have benefited had he consistently played centrally and would be further ahead in his development today. But I also suspect that a sizeable number of our online supporters would have treated his inevitable inconsistency with considerable ("Gashford" impatience. To be fair, we still don't know whether he's ready to lead the line for a club with CL aspirations over a whole season, and it was reasonable to see him as an understudy a couple of years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if Rashford himself is happy to have gained a massive amount of top-level experience under Mourinho, even if it didn't supercharge his career.

With the tactics Jose set out for the rest of the team, I don't think Rashford would have looked the same as he does under Ole anyway, even as CF for Jose.

He would've certainly offered more in terms of work rate and harassing the defenders, but he'd have still been an isolated figure trying to play the target man rather than getting in behind the defence, and would have been starved of chances, getting slated by fans for not burying 1 chance in the 90 minutes he might have got.

Watching us now, it must be so good for the young attackers like Rash and Martial knowing that if they do miss an opportunity, the manager wont just drop them and say 'that's why I have to play Lukaku' to the press, and also that they know they'll get another few chances in the game to score as we're focused on attacking whenever we can!

"He would've certainly offered more in terms of work rate and harassing the defenders..."

That would depend on whether he'd have received the same instructions from Mourinho that Lukaku did, or whether given his different attributes there'd have been tactical changes and he'd have been given licence to run the channels rather than hold centrally to hold up balls over the top and to press defenders.

To be fair Rosso, Jose bought a player that cant hold the ball up and who prefers balls round the back and crosses, then starved him of crosses and asked him to hold the ball up. Not sure how much he'd have changed tactics for Rashford

comment by Elvis (U7425)
posted 1 hour, 27 minutes ago
To be fair Rosso, Jose bought a player that cant hold the ball up and who prefers balls round the back and crosses, then starved him of crosses and asked him to hold the ball up. Not sure how much he'd have changed tactics for Rashford
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not sure either.

That's why I was questioning Mike's comment about Rashford in terms of harassing defenders. I think we might well have seen a lazy-looking Rashford holding central and being used as a target man and pivot.

What a depressing thought. So glad that chumo has gone