Harry Redknapp: Manchester United starlet Marcus Rashford in danger of 'doing an Adnan Januzaj'

Make or break: Rashford faces a real test after hitting the ground running
Harry Redknapp19 May 2016

Marcus Rashford rise has been one of the highlights of this season but we are about to find out whether he is the real deal or another kid who falls by the wayside.

Rashford would never have got his chance if Manchester United hadn’t had injuries. He might even have been behind James Wilson and Will Keane had things panned out differently.

But Keane got injured and so they threw Rashford in much earlier than they ever thought they would. It just shows you — until you chuck them in at the deep end, you never know if they can swim.

I remember many years ago a fella called Tony Knapp, who played for Leicester, telling me they had an injury and debated throwing a kid in. The senior players at Leicester apparently said: ‘Nah, you can’t play him, he’s not ready’. But they decided to throw him in, he did brilliantly from the start and never looked back. That kid’s name was Frank McLintock.

England Euro 2016 warm-up friendlies and group fixtures

1/6

I like Rashford. His movement is good, he has pace and United’s game against Bournemouth on Tuesday night gave us all more evidence of his good link-up play. Eight goals in 17 games is an excellent return for a kid starting out like this and he is so exciting, I can see why Roy Hodgson decided to include him in a long list for Euro 2016.

It must have been a toss-up between the proven experience of Jermain Defoe, Andy Carroll’s presence or Rashford’s potential. It’ll be a great experience for Rashford just to train with these players and he might even get a run-out in one of the first two warm-up games but I think he’ll be one of the three Roy leaves out. England have Harry Kane, Jamie Vardy, Wayne Rooney and Daniel Sturridge — they have enough cover in attack.

Rashford may have to deal with that disappointment, although it shouldn’t be too great considering he has come from nowhere but the bigger problem is United are going to spend money this summer.

If they bring in another big-money striker — and it would be a massive gamble not to do so given how they have struggled for goals this season — then that will push Rashford back down to the pecking order. How many players have you seen that happen to over the years?

Look at Adnan Januzaj. He looked like the greatest player we had seen for years when he first came in. Everyone thought he was a genius and United fans were baying for him to get a new contract to stop the risk of losing him for nothing. The club gave him a huge five-year deal, meanwhile every nation he was conceivably eligible to play for scrambled to get him. The FA were desperate to get him to play for England.

Then, suddenly United spend nearly £60m on Angel Di Maria and Januzaj dies a death. He’s out of the team, confidence drains away and they end up shipping him out on loan to Borussia Dortmund, whose coaches call him lazy and disinterested. A change of manager, with people talking about Jose Mourinho coming in, could complicate things even more for Rashford just like Louis van Gaal replacing David Moyes did for Januzaj.

Rashford looks to be a really promising player but the issue with rising so quickly is that it quickly becomes a long way to fall.

Let’s hope he can prove himself all over again.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT