What’s been the secret to the highly elevated form of Marcus Rashford lately? Well, obviously the impact that caretaker manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has had on him is first and foremost. The Rashford camp is also currently working on a contract extension with the club so that’s an added motivation to perform at a higher level.
There is another added incentive however, and it was revealed by good friend, countryman and fellow attacking player Jesse Lingard. The winger revealed that he’s in a friendly head-to-head battle with the striker.
“Marcus and me have been setting targets for each other to challenge ourselves,” he said at a league sponsorship event entitle ‘Where Everyone Plays’ yesterday.
“I’m not going to go into the amount of numbers involved because then everyone will know. It’s to do with goals, but not just how many we can score each. Assists as well.”
Whatever it is, it’s working and it’s working well. Rashford has six goals and two assists in the ten games that Solskjaer has been in charge. No player outside of Paul Pogba has embodied the Solskjaer turnaround as much as Marcus Rashford.
Jesse Lingard spoke of the positive impact the Norwegian has had.
“He understands the way we play, he has got the lads firing. We understand the tactics, we’ve got a structure now and hopefully we can go on,” Lingard added.
United travel to Fulham, the league’s second from bottom side on Saturday, before then embarking on a very challenging stretch of the schedule in which they will face Paris Saint-Germain, Liverpool and Chelsea all within a few weeks time.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, regularly appears as a guest pundit on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
He also contributes sociopolitical essays to Chicago Now. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. The content of his cat’s Instagram account is unquestionably superior to his.