Manchester United

Red Devils boss Ruben Amorim has encountered enormous issues on the pitch this season, with his side's 2-0 defeat against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Thursday seeing the club drop to 14th place on Boxing Day.

Rashford has been notably absent from each of the team's last four matchday squads, and despite United losing three of those fixtures, there appears to be no plan to reintroduce the forward to the XI anytime soon.

Amorim has effectively banished Rashford from the team, and journalist Andy Mitten told talkSPORT that he is not the first manager to have fallen out with the Englishman.

When asked about Amorim's influence on Rashford's absence, Mitten said: "I do think that the manager has had a big say here. I think he is doing it his way and he's a smiling assassin, he's a disciplinarian.

"Every previous manager has had issues with Marcus Rashford. I've spoken to them, I know them, they've told me in confidence going back years and years and years."

Rashford has played for Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Erik ten Hag and Amorim, as well as the likes of Ralf Rangnick, and it is alarming that the forward has reportedly clashed with such a wide variety of coaches.

Is Ruben Amorim right to exclude Marcus Rashford?

United have failed to score in their previous two outings, and while they managed to net three times against Tottenham Hotspur during their EFL Cup loss on December 19, at least two of their goals can be attributed to errors by Spurs' goalkeeper.

In fact, the Red Devils have only scored 21 goals in the Premier League this season, fewer than 15 of the other 19 clubs in the top flight.

Rashford has scored 138 goals for United, a tally that makes him the club's 15th top goalscorer in history, and he has netted just seven fewer than Cristiano Ronaldo did at the club.

However, the 27-year-old has only scored 11 Premier League goals in 2024-25 and 2023-24 combined so far, and while he did score 17 times in the top flight in 2022-23, he has only once scored more than 11 league goals in a season.

If reports of Rashford's disruptive nature are true, then it is fair to say that the academy graduate may not be as big of a miss as initially thought in light of his inconsistent goalscoring record.

Considering Amorim can hardly be held responsible for the poor state of the squad he inherited from Erik ten Hag, perhaps allowing Rashford to leave in the January window would be of benefit to the team as a whole, as it could allow the Portuguese boss to begin a reset at United.

Written by

Lewis Nolan