Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer certainly made a rash decision to say the least on Wednesday night. He played his team’s leading scorer, Marcus Rashford who has 19 goals, in a FA Cup replay match while the young man was carrying a single stress fracture in his back.
He was also playing through the pain of a piece of floating bone in his ankle. Rashford further injured his back in the midweek win over Wolves and came off after just 16 minutes. During the telecast of today’s rivalry match at Liverpool, which United lost 2-0, a Marcus Rashford injury update was given.
As per @henrywinter Rashford facing up to 3 months out with a double stress fracture in his back. Dreadful blow to #mufc at a time when they're already without McTominay until end of Feb/March and Pogba https://t.co/G6nw7q2NWx
— James Ducker (@TelegraphDucker) January 19, 2020
The NBC broadcast, citing a report from Harry Winter of The Times, articulated that Rashford now has a double stress fracture in his back, and he’ll be out of action two or three months! Additionally, he’ll need non-intrusive surgery (not sure what they really means, but okay) to repair the ankle issue.
Outlets everywhere have picked up this news, which is absolutely devastating for the Red Devils. Sitting fifth in the table, and already without their top two midfielders long term in Paul Pogba and Scott McTominay, they are extremely short-handed in the task to try and unseat Chelsea in the top four.
And while they’re currently favorites to win the Europa League, it’s hard to fathom they’ll retain that position in the wake of this news. Given the injury and recovery timeline, we likely won’t see Marcus Rashford in action again until late March or early April.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
You can follow Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com on Twitter here and his cat on Instagram at this link.