Henry Winter: Rashford spent the summer getting supremely fit, reporting early for training | Wants to stay as he loves the club

The same Vidic who couldn't wait to leave, the second things got difficult?

Players leaving I can live with. No effort on the pitch is inexcusable.

Besides my beef is the whole "local lads" thing.

My heros at UTD were anything but local lads. Starting with SAF and all the way through from Best, Robson, Keane, Cantona, Hughes et al
 
Does it matter if Rashford is more fit if he still does not have the mental will to sacrifice himself on the pitch for the team? I just dont see this as the solution!
 
So you're another one of those loons that think that only people from Manchester should support the club? Or you have to have been to Manchester a certain amount in your eyes or what? I haven't been over in about 15 years I think because I simply can't afford it anymore, does that make my support of the team worse somehow? Does it mean I'm not allowed the same opinions on players and the team etc?

I've been a fan for over 30 years and I won't be talked down too by someone like you, being all high and mighty, just because you happen to be born in Manchester. It doesn't make you a better fan than me, and I think it's disrespectful to even think that, if you do. If that is what you think then I couldn't be arsed conversing with you any further.

It was a car crash of a post.
 
Holy! So he's basically been playing injured since 2019 according to that guy? :lol:

No wonder so many of us are sceptical about Rashford. Whenever he goes through a rough patch, PR articles like these come out.
Yeah I actually like Winter's writing and of course I hope our club is going in the right direction but this seems like a bit of a rich mix, it does seem a little too obviously PR for me.
 
The same Vidic who couldn't wait to leave, the second things got difficult?
He was already downhill, had given us his best years and played his heart out every time he put on a United shirt. Can’t believe anyone would begrudge him.
 
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I'd get excited if he came back with a beer belly. This we've heard before.
Imagine that! Flat cap, pigeons, pasty diet, straight in double footed on the PL's newest £100mm+ player, doesn't even stop to argue with ref, walks off proud, EtH and Brexit Jim applauding him.
 
It has everything to do with it. No idea why anyone would support a club based in a city they've never even visited, let alone lived in. It's a mystery to me.

If this truly baffles you, you must find life very difficult to negotiate and understand. :lol: :lol:
 
Give me a "not local" Cantona, Evra or Vidic over 10 local Rashfords any day
Amen, brother!

If this truly baffles you, you must find life very difficult to negotiate and understand. :lol: :lol:
:lol::lol::lol: Let's not tell him, the founder of this forum, and most members do not live in Manchester...
 
I‘m so relieved; I believe Rashford will have a great season with lots of goals. He worked so hard last season when he was on the pitch; I‘m full of confidence he will be outstanding.
 
Looking at it in its basic terms as an employee of an organisation. You have a worker who is very erratic. For all the good, there is twice as much bad as far as his output is concerned. Any other industry the employee would be fired.
Rashford then keeps telling you through others, how next year and all the other years after how its going to be different, despite this happening time and time again. As a football club, as a manager, why would you fall for this nonsense, time and time again?
Utd are hampered by his wages and length of contract, by his 'but, but, hes a local lad and he helps the community' crap that is always spouted by his fanboys is wearing way too thin.
There is a new ruthless regime that wants to rebuild and cannot hold on to baggage, and at the end of the day it doesnt matter who or what he is outside football. If he's not good enough then he should be moved on, or at least try to move him on.
:+1: :+1: :+1:
 
Would SAF have sold him by now in your opinion? According to your post you should know better than anyone how deeply commitment and work ethic are imbedded in the fabric of this club.
Of course he wouldn't, he's a great Manc that Alex Ferguson.
 
PR piece gets released:

"Great to see he's putting a shift in"

This is why he does it. These things work.
 
Imagine that. Getting behind the players. Crazy scenes. Will never catch on.
Imagine that. Getting behind players who couldn't even be arsed to run on the ptch, but just stroll around. Seems to have caught on after believing the Rashford PR.
 
I really want him to get his head down and be the player he can be, if he ends up staying but the piece is insulting.

“he is putting the work in now that he visibly didnt all season. He is now ready to do what he chose not to do for the last 12 months”

“the reason he didn’t play well, or even run since August was because of an injury he picked up when the season was nearly over”

How is this not insulting?
 
I really want him to get his head down and be the player he can be, if he ends up staying but the piece is insulting.

“he is putting the work in now that he visibly didnt all season. He is now ready to do what he chose not to do for the last 12 months”

“the reason he didn’t play well, or even run since August was because of an injury he picked up when the season was nearly over”

How is this not insulting?
He‘s on my naughty list. The only to get off of it, is work hard on and off the pitch.

I think he should ditch his PR agency, get off social media and focus on performance 100%.
 
The same Vidic who couldn't wait to leave, the second things got difficult?
The same Vidic who was ridiculed by the press when he arrived and underperformed, but then went on to silence them by not only winning multiple major trophies but becoming one of the best the PL has ever seen? Difficult, sure.
 
Was his fitness every really a problem? Lad always looked like he had the body of a Greek god.
 
Amen, brother!


:lol::lol::lol: Let's not tell him, the founder of this forum, and most members do not live in Manchester...
That's exactly what I was going to say to him aswell! But I just decided to put him on ignore instead :lol: I can't stand that kind of attitude, it irritates me big time.
 
It has everything to do with it. No idea why anyone would support a club based in a city they've never even visited, let alone lived in. It's a mystery to me. Each to their own, though, I guess. To me, it's about community and civic pride and family (every time anything significant happens with United, I think of my grandad, a diehard Mancunian Red who died far too young). The stories my uncles and my mom told me about the Busby Babes, about Munich, about how it felt to be in Piccadilly Gardens when the newspapers blared the awful headlines, about redemption ten years later against Benfica, about crying as a kid when we were relegated then celebrating our return to exciting wing play under the Doc. And on a more mundane level, about getting on that bus every other Saturday to cross South Manchester to Old Trafford and pay my two quid at the Stretford End turnstiles.

I realize not everyone was fortunate enough to experience all of this, and that's fine, but this is why I won't call out any players, let alone fellow Mancs who play for United, period. You call it "tosh" (which is astonishingly disrespectful, frankly); I call it what it feels like to be a lifelong United fan born in that great city to a family who lived and breathed the club.
If supporting the club is limited to only people from Manchester, the club wouldnt have the financial resources to compete. Do you understand what you said is completely out of touch with reality? Have you seen how much the club pay for transfers and wages?
 
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Last year, the Overlap episode with him was showing him in his preseason preparations, and he spoke at lenght how he does it. And drop an absolute stinker of a season. Now, this article, its a deja vu for me. And you can see why people are connecting the PR dots.

He has never been closer to be put up for sale by the club, he has turned quite a few fans against him with his performances of past season, body language, off the field issues and what's most inexcusable, visible lack of effort during games.

Stories popping up that his brother has flatly refused to even contemplate selling him in Saudi, while stories of a breakdown with Ten Hag emerging.

Nothing would be make me happier to see him do his talking on the pitch instead of having a PR Minions. He was supposed to be the pinnacle of everything this club is about, local youth that was given the chance to show the World what Manchester United is about on the biggest sporting stage. God, I really thought that night in Paris will propell him into a United legend. He has slowly turned himself into the poster boy of everything that United fans don't want in a player.

I hope he turns a new page, gets the right people around him that will tell him the cold truth, instead of having yes men that will validate the fantasy world in which he currently lives and are more concerned about Marcus Rashford the public persona, than the Marcus Rashford, the footballer. Hope the England drop has hurt him enough so that he can really silence his doubters in the upcoming season.
 
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I’m not a pro athlete, not even playing pickup football as a hobby, so I for sure can’t speak for what he’s been going through, but… how hard is it to just put your head down and perform to the level you know you are capable of? He can easily, easily become an icon at Man Utd when all is said and done if he’s consistently putting up the numbers he can at his peak, so why doesn’t he just do that? It’s befuddling and frankly frustrating, coming from a supporter of his.
 
It has everything to do with it. No idea why anyone would support a club based in a city they've never even visited, let alone lived in. It's a mystery to me. Each to their own, though, I guess. To me, it's about community and civic pride and family (every time anything significant happens with United, I think of my grandad, a diehard Mancunian Red who died far too young). The stories my uncles and my mom told me about the Busby Babes, about Munich, about how it felt to be in Piccadilly Gardens when the newspapers blared the awful headlines, about redemption ten years later against Benfica, about crying as a kid when we were relegated then celebrating our return to exciting wing play under the Doc. And on a more mundane level, about getting on that bus every other Saturday to cross South Manchester to Old Trafford and pay my two quid at the Stretford End turnstiles.

I realize not everyone was fortunate enough to experience all of this, and that's fine, but this is why I won't call out any players, let alone fellow Mancs who play for United, period. You call it "tosh" (which is astonishingly disrespectful, frankly); I call it what it feels like to be a lifelong United fan born in that great city to a family who lived and breathed the club.
We all respect your personal experience but a strong connection can transcend geographical boundaries. There are people who weren’t around or physically present on location during the Seattle punk rock scene or the Beatles / British Invasion period, but have a deep seated personal connection to the music of those periods. Like music, football is a global sport and I’m surprised that by now you haven’t figured out the reason and intensity of foreign support.

And as someone alluded, applying this to the Rashford situation, we all love the local youth academy heritage of the club, but it cannot supersede merit. Just like an individual may find more connection with those from his own community or ethnic origin, but to discriminate against someone, more capable / well natured, of a different one, would be wrong. So it’s perfectly natural for fans to prefer, in a hypothetical scenario, a Park Ji Sung who bleeds for the badge over Rashford who refuses to run or contest long balls.
 
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He always looks so miserable these days. Like he's not interested at all.

Does he really want to stay and fight for his place? Or does he just want to keep collecting a fat paycheck on the United gravy train?
 
What truly matters is the player's professionalism, commitment and love for the shirt. I can't care less of where he was born. I would take Cantona/Keane/Vidic ahead of ravel morrison
 
It has everything to do with it. No idea why anyone would support a club based in a city they've never even visited, let alone lived in. It's a mystery to me. Each to their own, though, I guess. To me, it's about community and civic pride and family (every time anything significant happens with United, I think of my grandad, a diehard Mancunian Red who died far too young). The stories my uncles and my mom told me about the Busby Babes, about Munich, about how it felt to be in Piccadilly Gardens when the newspapers blared the awful headlines, about redemption ten years later against Benfica, about crying as a kid when we were relegated then celebrating our return to exciting wing play under the Doc. And on a more mundane level, about getting on that bus every other Saturday to cross South Manchester to Old Trafford and pay my two quid at the Stretford End turnstiles.

I realize not everyone was fortunate enough to experience all of this, and that's fine, but this is why I won't call out any players, let alone fellow Mancs who play for United, period. You call it "tosh" (which is astonishingly disrespectful, frankly); I call it what it feels like to be a lifelong United fan born in that great city to a family who lived and breathed the club.
I think you missed the fact United is a globally known and supported club. By your logic people should support only the clubs from their own town or village.
 
Last year, the Overlap episode with him was showing him in his preseason preparations, and he spoke at lenght how he does it. And drop an absolute stinker of a season. Now, this article, its a deja vu for me. And you can see why people are connecting the PR dots.

He has never been closer to be put up for sale by the club, he has turned quite a few fans against him with his performances of past season, body language, off the field issues and what's most inexcusable, visible lack of effort during games.

Stories popping up that his brother has flatly refused to even contemplate selling him in Saudi, while stories of a breakdown with Ten Hag emerging.

Nothing would be make me happier to see him do his talking on the pitch instead of having a PR Minions. He was supposed to be the pinnacle of everything this club is about, local youth that was given the chance to show the World what Manchester United is about on the biggest sporting stage. God, I really thought that night in Paris will propell him into a United legend. He has slowly turned himself into the poster boy of everything that United fans don't want in a player.

I hope he turns a new page, gets the right people around him that will tell him the cold truth, instead of having yes men that will validate the fantasy world in which he currently lives and are more concerned about Marcus Rashford the public persona, than the Marcus Rashford, the footballer. Hope the England drop has hurt him enough so that he can really silence his doubters in the upcoming season.

There was that episode of the Overlap where the lads alluded to him not having the "right people" around him. You can maybe read between the lines and think maybe it's people who are trying to build a brand and around him and earn from that brand, rather than have someone experienced to give him advice and maybe some tough love as and when it's needed.

Despite everything, his lack of form, criticism from the fans, disciplinary issues, losing his place in the England squad and being left at home this summer - the impression I get from Rashford and the whole PR around him - is that he feels like the victim rather than someone who's at least partially responsible for what's happened to him over the last 12-18 months.

There's no sense it's been recognised either within his camp or even by Rashford himself that he's the one the buck stops with. Instead the response is to firefight with self pity. That "doubt me? Even better" interview, these PR fluff pieces about working hard. Worryingly it tells me he, and maybe people around him, still don't get it. They still haven't admitted the problem starts and ends with his attitude and application on the pitch, not with those unappreciative of his talents.

There's only two roles that Rashford seems comfortable in playing - hero or victim. He needed someone to take him under their wing when he was young, point out all these GQ awards and MBEs and Smash Hits Poll Winners Party gongs (or whatever) were unimportant and to concentrate on his game. When people update the book on what are the risks of a promising talent getting too much fame and too many accolades too soon, I fear it's a shoe-in that Rashford is going to get his own chapter.


Prolonged dip in form, application and in public perception following a peroid of huge praise and accolades, the sudden and sharp withdrawal of such followed on very closely with disciplinary issues, losing his place with the national team, all night benders, self-pittying press interviews. It's sad, but I have some magic beans for anyone who thinks the next chapter of this story is the lad putting his head down, working hard and having a great season.
 
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Oh please.

I have no issues with anyone from any part of the world.

My issue is with people on here who can't seemingly comprehend that some local fans have a relationship with the club than others. And maybe the thought of having a load of academy players is better than the club routinely wasting 2/300 million on the next flavour of the month.

On Rashford, the language that you have even used is a bit weird. "Disrespect" is a strange word. Yes, going out drinking was a bad look but hardly the first to make that mistake. Rooney and Keane to name two. I also remember Scholes refusing to play a League Cup match once...

I saw that Mark Goldbridge twat having a go at him for crying after the cup final. It's almost like someone's who entire relationship with the club is based on reactionary bullshit couldn't understand why a local lad would be a bit emotional after beating city in an FA Cup final.
I think it's more down to how absolutely lazy he is, and how he sulks.
 
I’m not a pro athlete, not even playing pickup football as a hobby, so I for sure can’t speak for what he’s been going through, but… how hard is it to just put your head down and perform to the level you know you are capable of? He can easily, easily become an icon at Man Utd when all is said and done if he’s consistently putting up the numbers he can at his peak, so why doesn’t he just do that? It’s befuddling and frankly frustrating, coming from a supporter of his.
To be fair, it actually is quite difficult to consistently perform at your top level in a misfiring team that is constantly being dominated and ripped apart because of a combination of tactics and available players. Most people don't seem to realise just how big an impact confidence has on players performance levels, and it's hardly surprising that confidence levels for a lot of players were through the floor last season. When you're confident everything just seems easier; your reactions feel faster, your passes are sharper, you get your shots away a bit faster, you can run further or with more intensity without getting tired, etc.

In saying that, it doesn't excuse just how bad Rashford does get and his lack of effort. A drop in form is one thing, but he goes beyond that.
 
There was that episode of the Overlap where the lads alluded to him not having the "right people" around him. You can maybe read between the lines and think maybe it's people who are trying to build a brand and around him and earn from that brand, rather than have someone experienced to give him advice and maybe some tough love as and when it's needed.

Despite everything, his lack of form, criticism from the fans, disciplinary issues, losing his place in the England squad and being left at home this summer - the impression I get from Rashford and the whole PR around him - is that he feels like the victim rather than someone who's at least partially responsible for what's happened to him over the last 12-18 months.

There's no sense it's been recognised either within his camp or even by Rashford himself that he's the one the buck stops with. Instead the response is to firefight with self pity. That "doubt me? Even better" interview, these PR fluff pieces about working hard. Worryingly it tells me he, and maybe people around him, still don't get it. They still haven't admitted the problem starts and ends with his attitude and application on the pitch, not with those unappreciative of his talents.

There's only two roles that Rashford seems comfortable in playing - hero or victim. He needed someone to take him under their wing when he was young, point out all these GQ awards and MBEs and Smash Hits Poll Winners Party gongs (or whatever) were unimportant and to concentrate on his game. When people update the book on what are the risks of a promising talent getting too much fame and too many accolades too soon, I fear it's a shoe-in that Rashford is going to get his own chapter.


Prolonged dip in form, application and in public perception following a peroid of huge praise and accolades, the sudden and sharp withdrawal of such followed on very closely with disciplinary issues, losing his place with the national team, all night benders, self-pittying press interviews. It's sad, but I have some magic beans for anyone who thinks the next chapter of this story is the lad putting his head down, working hard and having a great season.

This is the point I was aiming for last night. But typing from a phone, and at 3 am my local time, your training of thought eludes you.
 
If supporting the club is limited to only people from Manchester, the club wouldnt have the financial resources to compete. Do you understand what you said is completely out of touch with reality? Have you seen how much the club pay for transfers and wages?
Well said and I lived in wythenshawe and Salford for 44 years. The club would be a Bristol Rovers if only local people supported them
 
He proves some people wrong every season - just, with him being so inconsistent, it's different people each season depending on whether it's one of his good or poor seasons.

Last season was one of his awful ones, and so 'proved wrong' those who backed him to do well. This year he's probably due a better season, so might well 'prove wrong" those expecting another poor one. But the season after that? Who knows?

A good season next year won't really 'prove' anything either way. Other than how inconsistent he is. He needs to deliver a run of good seasons before he starts 'proving wrong' those who've said he's too inconsistent to justify the high wages and key role in the team.

If we look at it holistically, Rashford's shit seasons have coincided with us having shit seasons. The one when Ole & Rangnick had a tough time and in the last one ETH struggled to get any tune of the team. We as a club struggled in both those seasons and Rashford inevitably suffered too. I am not saying he shouldn't have done better but for some reason he gets singled out despite having scored 30 goals in the previous season. It's not always possible to be highly productive when the team as a whole is on a down-slide.

I'll be okay if Rashford wants to leave and thinks that would be better for his career. I don't think any player should be kept around against his wishes. However, we would have to replace him with another high productivity player if we have to be successful. Besides Vini, Kvara & Leao, I don't see many left sided wide players who can come in and replace his numbers. The grass always looks greener on the other side, but there aren't many players in world football with the capability of replacing his numbers coming from the wide left.

Also, this talk of his "PR getting into action" is funny. There are 320 posts in this thread and 300+ are chastising him and the article. Who is the "PR" working on?