Can’t get on board with the majority of posts in here. My feeling is that it’s not on Rashford if the club and management anointed him a saviour or one to carry a team. In assessment, they have years of evidence of highs and lows; his peaks and troughs aren’t new and as such, should have been catered for and contingency factored in. There’s also the enormous problem at this club that we’ve become more dependent on the hero, than we’ve ever been, even when we were the best team in the world. Worse still, so many of you don’t factor that into putting the boot into Rashford.
Far better teams than us, past and present, ensure that no player is an island, and if any star player of theirs is, they work tirelessly to get said player assistance. Players in a different stratosphere to Rashford are being given far better teammates:
- Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappè, LewandowskI, Benzema, Haaland a veritable who’s who of the past 5 years, have all been backed, supported and aided by the kind of players Rashford can only dream of playing with. Kane is the only player in that top bracket of forwards who was said to carry a team, and even then, he had Son to work with, Rashford doesn’t even get that. It’s just a fact that good or top clubs make life as easy as possible for their players, but what do we do? We make Rashford a single point failure last season and exacerbate it the next season, and none of you comment on it? The same goes for Casemiro; he goes from an elite midfield that caters for each player and their foibles, to our mess, carries it for as long as he can, then capitulates, but he’s to blame, and not the cloggers he’s being overworked next to? Name a giant club that isolates an elite midfielder like we do.
Rashford should not be carrying our striking burden. We had Ronaldo, Rooney and Tevez here once upon a time and the manager still sought to add more firepower. To a man those are superior players to Rashford, and yet they had each other plus an unneeded Bulgarian thrown in for good measure. Incidentally, it’s no coincidence we looked an entirely different outfit with Martial and Greenwood alongside Rashford where any weaknesses in any of their respective game was covered by another in the forward line. Now? We have a very raw kid at point and a non entity (whoever plays there) on the right. Rashford’s blind alley football looks so much worse because nobody else comes close to picking up the baton or sharing the load; this solo superhero gig is for a select few, and even then, extremely ill-advised (as above), and I can’t believe Rashford gets dug out for it.
The deviation this season is his exact same game as last season isn’t working out, but where’s the contingency? Where is the remainder of the 4*4 relay unit every team worth its salt has? When these other top players get to pass the baton on to an able match winner, where’s Rashford‘s?