Marcus Rashford needs to change if he is to succeed away from Man United, writes IAN LADYMAN as the star admits he is ready for a ‘new challenge’ 

The great imponderable about Marcus Rashford and his stated desire to leave Manchester United is quite how he thinks it’s going to be any different anywhere else.

After all, the prerequisites of professional football are the same wherever it is you play. The requirement to run and chase and commit and fit in and work hard and be generous and selfless will follow Rashford wherever he goes.

Spain, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, America. Football is football. It may look and feel different from afar, as Rashford ponders in isolation just how he cannot be considered good enough or dedicated enough for just about the worst United squad in recent memory. But the truth is that it isn’t. It’s exactly the same.

So now that he has broken cover the truth will dawn on Rashford soon enough. He chose an interesting way to tell journalist Henry Winter of his wish to leave his boyhood club. Back at his old Primary school to hand out Christmas presents to young children, Rashford selected the place where one journey started to deliver news of another one about to end. Why he did it that way, only he will know and possibly care.

The truth is that Rashford’s PR has been as clunky as his football for a very long time but it’s the football that has led him to this juncture now.

Certainly it hasn’t taken the new United manager Ruben Amorim long to work it all out. Amorim’s predecessor Erik ten Hag knew it. A huge portion of the rank and file United fanbase have long known it too. Rashford is not the footballer he once was. He is not the team-mate he once was. He does not have the focus he once had.

The forward, who has been at United since the age of seven, made the bombshell admission during a visit to his old primary school, where he handed out 420 presents to children

It has not taken Ruben Amorim to work out that Rashford is not the player he once was

And if, at the age of 27, he is going to turn his career around and reach the heights he once did – only at a new club – then all of that will have to change. Because this is not about an issue with a particular manager or team-mate or environment. This is not, for example, similar to the fall out with Ten Hag that saw Jadon Sancho leave the club last season.

No this is a train that has been coming down the track for a while. This is about a change within Rashford that has been subtle and gradual but has become increasingly hard to ignore. 

The deficiencies that Ten Hag saw have now been recognised by two England managers – Gareth Southgate and Lee Carsley – and a new United one. Drop-offs – however small they may be – in commitment, attitude, sharpness and training levels. These are the fundamental tools of every footballer’s trade and without them you are nothing.

This is Rashford 2024. As a person, he may not have changed. Who can really know? But as an athlete he has and that is what in all likelihood will see him leave Old Trafford next month, perhaps initially on loan.

His advocates will tell us that somebody else will be lucky to have him. That United’s loss will be somebody else’s gain. That is yet to proven. 

The truth is that Rashford now has everything to prove. Past achievements count for nothing. It is not a given at all that he walks in to a new environment and returns to the levels he once reached.

Not all footballers are meant to last the distance. Some burn brightly from a young age and then fade away. Rashford may well be one of these. It happens sometimes and if it does here then one day we will look back and see him for what he was years earlier, a smile-on-your-face young forward who lit up his own football club and then took it upon himself to fight and win much greater battles away from the field.

Deficiencies noted by Ten Hag have been recognised by two England bosses and Amorim

Rashford has enjoyed success at Man United but the change has become hard to ignore

Rashford has everything to prove with no guarantee he can return to his previous best level

Almost nine years on from that remarkable debut as a teenager in the Europa League against Midtjylland, Rashford undoubtedly needs a clean break from United just as much as they need one from him.

Rashford told Winter at the Button Lane Primary School that he will always be a United fan at heart and will make sure he is no trouble as he heads for the road out of the place.

But a small but pertinent detail at the start of another big week for Amorim and United is that as Rashford’s words span round the world and back just after tea-time last night, he had not thought to tell a single person at the club that he was about to say them.