The striker’s interview did not go down well with some players (Pictures: The United Stand / Getty)
YouTuber Mark Goldbridge has defended Rasmus Hojlund’s decision to conduct an interview with his Manchester United fan channel amid reports some players were unhappy about it.
After a stuttering start to the season and hampered by injuries, the Denmark international finally opened his Premier League account on Boxing Day against Aston Villa.
He went on to net in six consecutive league matches, bagging seven goals and two assists, but has missed United’s last three Premier League clashes due to injury.
At the start of February, in the middle of his purple patch, Hojlund somewhat surprisingly sat down for an interview with ‘The United Stand’ YouTube channel, with Goldbridge – who has something of a cult following – asking the questions.
While it may seem innocuous enough to speak to a United channel with 1.83million subscribers, the United We Stand magazine has since claimed that several players were unhappy with the interview.
The channel is reportedly perceived by some within the dressing room to be built on ‘negativity’ and ‘slaughtering players’, with Goldbridge notoriously brutal when United fall short, and Hojlund was spoken to by several aggrieved team-mates.
It is claimed that the 21-year-old was apologetic and did not realise how his team-mates felt, but Goldbridge has now issued a lengthy rebuttal in which he says the club were heavily involved in setting up the interview and no issues were ever raised.
Reacting to the reports, Goldbridge said on The United Stand: ‘This is an opportunistic pile-on to try and distract. This is a distraction technique and it’s probably coming from these players.
Hojlund sat down for an engaging chat last month (Picture: Getty)
‘The bottom line for me is, I don’t understand the world we live in anymore. Even if a couple of United players weren’t happy with Rasmus for doing an interview with The United Stand, why do you think they weren’t happy about it? Because they’ve been criticised for not being very good.
‘So United fans hear that and decide to side with the players who aren’t good enough against fans who call them out for not being good enough.’
He continued: ‘Where it’s false is that Rasmus didn’t reply and say, “Oh I’m really sorry, I didn’t realise” because if you watch the interview, he’s talking about my career mode [videos on the channel].
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‘The bottom line is, Rasmus before he was at United, knew about who I was and the United Stand. So when they make out he said “Oh I’m really sorry I didn’t realise” it never happened. Didn’t happen.
‘And I’ll tell you why. One, because he knew about The United Stand way before this. Two, we’ve been in press conferences for years – and if these players haven’t liked it why haven’t they said something about it?
‘And three, the most important thing, was this interview was hand-in-hand with the club and the player. This interview was aware of by everyone at Man United, from top to bottom, and it took months. So if these players didn’t want it to happen they could have stopped it at any point.’
He added: ‘I know there’s players that don’t like The United Stand. There’s a lot of players that do. Guess what, there’s a lot of players that don’t like each other in the dressing room either! So I don’t care that they don’t like The United Stand, that’s up to them.’
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