I fear Rashford may be the next Loftus-Cheek
CHELSEA fans often tell me what a talent Ruben LoftusCheek is. And it is true that he looks a fine player. But we don’t really know much more about him than when he made his debut at 18.
He has made 22 appearances for Chelsea but just 10 of those were starts. That’s not nearly enough for us to judge him and not enough to help him develop as a player.
If he had played for two full seasons at another club, or at least started 60 games in the past two years, we would know more.
If he had done that he might even be knocking on the door of the England squad. Maybe he could be the real deal for England. Right now he had only played one game for Antonio Conte and that was in the EFL Cup. He’ll be 21 in January and in a three-year period in which he could have played 80 or 90 games, he will be lucky to get to 20 starts.
By the time I was 21, in 1978, I had played 104 times for Tottenham in the top division and 102 of those appearances were in the starting XI. My experience wasn’t exceptional. That’s simply the way the game was then. If you had a youngster who you thought had a chance, he tended to get thrown in at the age of 18.
So I look at Marcus Rashford at Manchester United and worry that over the next few years he might go the same way as Loftus-Cheek. He started on Thursday and didn’t look particularly good but then again none of his team-mates did either. He had looked excellent coming on against Manchester City and scored the winner at Hull.
But I can’t see him getting a clear run in the first team at Manchester United. Certainly he’ll be fortunate to have made 100 starts by the age of 21. But those three years are crucial to your development as a player. If you’re on the bench and coming on occasionally, you aren’t learning.
It’s all well and good coming on when players are tired and the game is stretched. There’s much less responsibility on you then. Where you really learn is when you have to share the burden of expectation with the starting XI.
Having a couple of starts a month in the Europa League and League Cup and then waiting four weeks for your next start doesn’t breed maturity. A run of games in the first team means you get the full range of experiences.
You will have games where you finish on a high and others where you’re enormously disappointed. You’ll hit a run of games when you don’t seem to be at your best. Every sportsman does. Working your way through those matches and working out how to get out of that run is all part of the learning process which, in the case of Rashford, means he will hopefully end up a world-class player.
Even if Rashford does start occasionally, I suspect it will be wide on the left, which isn’t really his position. I’m delighted to see Zlatan Ibrahimovich in the Premier League. Even at 34, he’s one of the world’s great talents. Yet he’s blocking the way for Rashford, who is a centre forward and needs to play in that position but I’m afraid that doing so in the Under 21s for England or in the League Cup isn’t enough.
Given the system Jose Mourinho plays, he will require his wide men to do a lot of defensive work. In reality, you can’t really trust an 18-year-old whose natural position is centre forward to do that. So I can’t even see him getting a lot of starts in that position.
Jose Mourinho isn’t a manager who trusts young players anyway. I understand that. He’s being paid to get Manchester United back in the Champions League and eventually
I WAS perplexed by the message Jose Mourinho sent out before Manchester United’s Europa League defeat by Feyenoord. By admitting it was a competition United didn’t want to be in, he effectively set the tone for the performance and the attitude of his young players.
I’m sure they would have said all the right things in the dressing room about wanting to win the game and United did try to do that. But subconsciously, Mourinho’s words would have seeped into the minds of those young players. It showed in the lack of intensity.
The match was an excellent opportunity for the fringe players to make a mark and challenge for a first-team place. But no-one seized that chance.
We all know the Europa League is not really the place for United, but by spelling it out so clearly, the manager seemed to pave the way for a disappointing night. to win the league. That’s his brief. Bringing on youngsters would be nice but he knows that in modern football it might be idealistic to follow the model Manchester United embraced in the 1990s but he’s very unlikely be at the club in five years. So what’s the point of taking a risk?
Louis van Gaal made mistakes at United but the one thing he did do was embrace Rashford. It was partly out of necessity but also because he had the mentality all through his career to gamble on young players. He gave Rashford 18 starts, in big games as well, against Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal and in the FA Cup final. He might not have been in the mix of first-team training but once he had discovered him, he went with him. That’s what propelled Rashford into the England squad.
I’m sure United are acutely aware of the risks of Rashford stagnating. They could send him out on loan but like Loftus-Cheek, he’s a little too good to give away. You want to keep him close because you feel you might need him. But in doing so you might be squeezing the life out of him.
Teenage players, their parents and agents have to look very carefully when signing up for a top-six club in the Premier League. The opportunities there are few and far between. Would a young Michael Owen get a chance nowadays at 17, as he did at Liverpool? Maybe Wayne Rooney would, as he was so physically mature. Not many would nowadays though.
I hope I’m wrong and that Rashford completes 30 starts for United this season. My instinct says he’ll be well short of that. And if that’s the case, he will have regressed.