As part of his heated rant following Manchester United’s defeat to Arsenal, club legend Roy Keane took aim at Marcus Rashford for his ‘body language’ for the second time in less than a month.
The Irishman criticised the forward for his ‘really shocking’ body language whilst mentioning that the Red Devils don’t have any real ‘characters’ or ‘leaders’ on the pitch right now.
Keane wasn’t impressed with Rashford ‘shrugging his shoulders’ during the frustrating tie, adding that the ace should be rolling his ‘sleeves up’ at times like that as a Man United player.
This is now the second time in less than a month that Keane has blasted Rashford’s ‘body language’, as he also did so whilst covering England’s win against Belgium for ITV Football, quotes via the Metro.
“I’m just not convinced with these players, I go back to it, we all talk about characters at Manchester United, I don’t see enough of them today.”
“I looked at Rashford closely today, he’s had a load of plaudits over the last few months, I know he’s still a young man, but his body language today was shocking, really shocking.”
“Shrugging his shoulders when things weren’t going his way, you roll your sleeves up at Man United, things aren’t going your way and that’s when you look at your leaders, your characters – I don’t see any leaders out there, right through the whole team.”
BBC Sport pundit Garth Crooks also slammed Rashford following the defeat to the Gunners, claiming that he ‘performed as if he had been given the afternoon off’.
With Keane making these comments for a second time about Rashford, they do once again come across as harsh and perhaps unwarranted.
In both of these displays that Keane has singled out Rashford’s poor ‘body language’, the team he was playing with employed a relatively negative style, limiting his ability to influence the game.
For England against Belgium, Gareth Southgate set up with the five at the back system that is being deployed to try and help us grind out results against top sides, whilst United looked second-best to the Gunners for the entire game after Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s flawed approach.
On both occasions, Rashford played in sides that really struggled for creativity, the forward shouldn’t be blamed, his chances of making anything happen were further hindered as Mikel Arteta’s side turned in a rare gritty performance for the ages.
Rashford was immediately fouled twice during the first-half for example when it looked like was on the break, courtesy of Rob Holding and Gabriel – with the Brazilian seeing a yellow for his trouble.
Keane’s point about United lacking ‘characters’ and ‘leaders’ is spot on, but the comments on Rashford are extremely harsh and hopefully don’t give birth to a general theme that the ace is flawed in this area.