Marcus Rashford has a ‘rotten’ attitude and has been taking it easy after earning a new contract at Manchester United.
That’s according to football pundit Craig Burley, who slammed the England forward ahead of United’s FA Cup tie with Newport County on Sunday.
Rashford did not travel to South Wales with his teammates for the 4-2 win after reporting ill for the final training session before the match on Friday.
However, reports have suggested Rashford flew to Belfast in midweek and was pictured on a night out in the Northern Ireland capital. United have said they were informed the images were from Wednesday night with the whole squad having a day off on Thursday.
Yet, it has been suggested they were from Thursday night ahead of the Friday session in which Rashford was too ill to attend.
When asked about Rashford after the game, manager Erik ten Hag insisted it was an internal manner. “In what sense? So he reported ill, for the rest it’s an internal matter, I deal with it. As I said, it’s an internal matter.”
Rashford has been at United’s Carrington training ground on Monday with his brother and advisor, Dwaine Maynard.
What Craig Burley said
“There’s more to this than meets the eye,” he said while speaking on ESPN. “I just don’t get it with this Marcus Rashford guy.
“Here we have a guy who’s super talented, comes off his best season ever, gets this big new deal and is clearly just sitting on his laurels. He’s clearly just said, ‘you know, what’ I’ve got this new contract…’
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“Because it’s not just this incident, if you watch his performances this season: He doesn’t track back, lack of end product, lack of interest. This is another headache Ten Hag is going to have to deal with.
“This by far not the first, I mean there’s a list as long as your arm of problematic players he’s having to deal with.
“And it’s so disappointing to see a player, rather than have the season Rashford did last year and say: ‘I was the best player last year at Manchester United, I carried the can for this club, it was all about me and I’m going to try and be even better this year and I’m going to try and take this team forward and take my career to a new level.’
“But no. He looks to me as if he’s just mailed it in. He’s got the deal and that’s the problem some times when you give these players these new, big contracts. What do you do?
“Do you let them go on a free? Do you let them go to a club on a reduced fee off the back of that season? Or do you give them a new deal? Give them the new deal there’s always a risk that a player switches off. It’s very unprofessional but that is often the risk.
“It looks to me that Marcus Rashford has gotten this new contract off the back of last year and has said: ‘I’m happy with my deal, you guys get on with it.’
“His attitude, in my opinion, has been absolutely rotten.”