Shearer: Marcus is wasting his talent
ALAN SHEARER has urged Erik ten Hag to take strong action over Marcus Rashford to prevent the player from wasting his career. Rashford missed yesterday’s FA Cup win at Newport amid reports he was in a Belfast bar the night before training. United boss Ten Hag said it is ‘an internal matter’ following allegations that Rashford was in Thompsons Garage nightclub on Thursday night, before flying back to Manchester on a private jet early on Friday and then missing training.
‘If it’s an internal matter then you would think something’s up,’ said Shearer, a pundit for the BBC at Rodney Parade. ‘There’s a huge talent in there with Rashford. But something is clearly wrong, either at home or his relationship with the football club, because he can’t keep doing this.
‘He can’t waste his talent. It’s not right and it needs strong management. When I see him play a lot of the time, it looks like he has got the world on his shoulders. For someone with that amount of talent, it needs sorting out and it needs sorting out now.’
Ten Hag has faced other disciplinary problems with Cristiano Ronaldo and Jadon Sancho during his time in charge of United.
Micah Richards, who was also working on yesterday’s game for the BBC, said: ‘We talk so much about the off-field problems at United, not just the on-field problems. ‘Marcus needs to understand he is a public figure wherever he goes. There’s going to be a lot of attention on him, whether you get the day off or whatever it is. It’s just not been good enough from the whole squad since Ten Hag came to the club.’ United gave up a two-goal lead before progressing to the fifth round, and captain Bruno Fernandes believes some players were too interested in going for personal glory at 2-0 instead of making more goals for the team. Alejandro Garnacho hit the bar with other players, including Fernandes, in the middle demanding a cross with the game still delicately poised. ‘It was not the result we wanted,’ said Fernandes. ‘We got the win we wanted, but the result was not the perfect one for us.
‘We had chances to make it 3-0 but everyone wanted to score and get their goal and sometimes we don’t get the best decision for the team.’ Newport boss Graham Coughlan added: ‘I thought we had them at two-all. We had them rattled. United could easily have gone under.’