Former Premier League midfielder turned pundit Jamie O’Hara has hit out at Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford for his ‘embarrassingly bad’ work rate.
After missing the win over Newport County in the fourth-round of the FA Cup, Marcus Rashford was in the line-up on Wednesday night for United’s 1-0 win over Nottingham Forest to secure a place in the quarter-finals of the competition.
A headed goal from Casemiro proved to be enough as Forest crashed out of the FA Cup. The result means United will play Liverpool at home in the next round.
While United got the result they wanted, after losing to Fulham at the weekend, Rashford found himself at the end of all the criticism once after a poor display up front.
TalkSPORT pundit Jamie O’Hara said: “Someone tell me what’s happened to Marcus Rashford, please, because I look at him, Dean (Saunders), and I’m watching a player who looks like he hates football and he doesn’t hate football because I’ve seen him play football where he looks like he’s enjoying it.
“Now, I look at him and I’m like: ‘You’re playing for Man United, which is one of the biggest honours in football if not the biggest, and you’re strolling about like you don’t even want to be there’. When he gives the ball away, he doesn’t even try and win it back. There’s no urgency to his game. I’m like: ‘You’ve come through the academy at Man United and you’re strolling about like you couldn’t care about this football club at all’.
“He does make runs but he only wants to make a run when he thinks he’s going to get in on goal or he’s going to get the ball. His work rate off the ball is embarrassingly bad. It’s so bad.
“I have player cam on him now because I’m literally watching him going: ‘Do you really want to be at Man United? Do you really care? Do you understand?’ Surely he understands because he has been at that football club since he was a kid. He must know what it means to play for this football club.
“But, when I watch him, I’m like ‘you are doing such a disservice to your fans’.”
Rashford is having a difficult season having scored just five goals in 32 appearances for United. He managed to rack up a tally of 30 goals last season and Erik ten Hag should be trying to get him back to the levels.
It was frustrating to watch Rashford last night, but that was made worse when he was denied a stonewall penalty in the second half.
Subscribe to the Stretty News podcast Strettycast for weekly episodes on Manchester United. You can also sign up to the ad-free Stretty Newsletter. Get the Stretty News verdict on all matters Manchester United.
