It is not hyperbolic to suggest that Marcus Rashford’s four months at Aston Villa are the most crucial of his career.
He has had rapid rises, none more so than the braces he scored in his first two Manchester United games, propelling him into the football stratosphere as an 18-year-old. And deep plunges, such as the 189-day Premier League goal drought he endured. But he has always had the parachute of being a United academy success story, one of their own, the benefit of the doubt often tipping the scales in his favour in troubling times.
Now, however, he is cast out and on his own: 27 years old still and potentially with his peak years in front of him but with a point to prove. Villa have provided the stage, but it is on him to perform on it. The football world is watching.
And the importance of this moment is not lost on the forward, who was once on a pathway to greatness but has lost his way.
He is staying in a hotel close to Villa’s Bodymoor Heath training ground and has impressed coaches with the extra work he is putting in. He arrived at the club with one of the lowest body fat percentages, but there was almost two months before his last game for United, 56 minutes in a Europa League game against Viktoria Plzen, and his debut for Villa in the FA Cup against Tottenham Hotspur.
That is a long time for any player to miss first-team football, so Rashford is currently embarking on a crash course in making the little time he has count. With that in mind, he is also rowing back on work with sponsors to concentrate on football.
Until Villa approached Rashford with the prospect of a move in December, there had been no intention of joining another Premier League club. It had been hoped a deal could be struck with Barcelona, but while talks were held it wasn’t a signing that was possible in January, due to the Spanish side’s financial constraints.
His availability took everyone by surprise. Transfers tend to be planned months in advance, but Rashford revealing in an interview that he was open to a new challenge, followed by a brutal, prolonged public castigation by United manager Ruben Amorim, suddenly thrust a 60-cap England international on the market.
Villa’s interest changed everything. They were a club competing in the Champions League and for the Champions League – but far enough removed from his boyhood club that it did not feel as though he was slighting them.
He knows a few of the players from his England days and is said to have settled in well, has been nothing but polite and friendly with staff, only wanting to get his head down, work hard, and start enjoying football again.
One source said the players have been stunned by his ability in training – that he has frequently stood out in a squad packed full of talent.
The day after he signed, on 2 February, Villa’s players were given two days off with no game for eight days. But Rashford went into training anyway, working with a fitness coach on the grass and in the gym, in punishing sessions demonstrating his speed and strength. He was keen to show his new employers that there were two sides to the story Amorim was telling in press conferences; that he wasn’t giving maximum effort in training, that he didn’t understand football the way the coach did, that he would prefer to put his 63-year-old goalkeeper coach Jorge Vital on the bench instead of the forward.
It was the coldest of cold shoulders, but Unai Emery has responded by placing a more comforting arm around the forward. The Villa manager, who sold his vision of Rashford’s rehabilitation in a phone call, has spent much time working one-on-one with the forward, mainly concentrating on positional play and tactical understanding.
The Villa manager simply wants to reinvigorate Rashford’s confidence and believes he has the skillset do it. As Rashford once said himself: “If I’m not happy then it’s difficult for me to play my best football.”
Mid-season signings can be hard to fit into a coach’s systems and philosophy, and Emery and his video analysts have been busy with Rashford, frequently discussing tactics and approaches, trying to ply him full of information and instructions so he can get up to speed on the pitch.
Emery is demanding tactically, but he is also fair: when Rashford is on the pitch, predominantly as left-winger, Emery has devised strategies that utilise his strengths – his pace, dribbling, directness, shooting – as opposed to trying to shoehorn him into a system that doesn’t work for him.
And Rashford, for his part, has responded well.
There is much overlap between player strengths and manager philosophy – Villa have been at their best under Emery when they attack with rapid, lethal transitions, an area that has dipped this season. At his best, Rashford is a forward who fits that mould.
One of the major statistical drop-offs between Rashford in his prime and Rashford more recently has been shots at goal. Yet it is an area he is good at, and one Emery has encouraged.
Before the Chelsea game, Emery told Rashford he was a substitute but to be ready, that though he wasn’t starting he could have a big impact from the bench – and Rashford coming on and setting up two goals to turn the game has strengthened a growing trust between the two.
At one stage, when Rashford was 21, reports in Spain claimed Barcelona were preparing an offer of £100m for the player and there is no question he has been valued close to the nine-digit mark.
Now clubs can sign him for around £40m – based on the valuation in the deal Villa have agreed with United to make the move permanent at the end of the loan.
As revealed by The i Paper, Barcelona remain interested and Rashford will sit down at the end of the season and assess his options.
Bayern Munich and Napoli are understood to be monitoring developments. Clubs want to see how he responds to a new environment and a new challenge. A player lifting themselves out of the hole he found himself in can develop a resilience that improves their game. Struggle, however, and options will contract.
After his two-assist appearance from the bench against Chelsea, a substitution that changed the game, Villa fans joked online that the club should try to sign Vital next.
If Rashford turns things around, Amorim may come to regret some of his comments.
from Football - The i Paper https://ift.tt/i5rOo98
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