Manchester United star Marcus Rashford has come under fire for his off-field behaviour (Picture: Getty)
Piers Morgan has criticised Marcus Rashford’s ‘ill-advised’ night out in Belfast and believes Manchester United should be ‘extremely concerned’ by one of their top stars seemingly ‘going off the rails’.
Rashford was omitted from Erik ten Hag’s matchday squad for United’s FA Cup fourth round victory over Newport at the weekend, with the 26-year-old forward said to have come down with an illness.
But it subsequently emerged that Rashford had been partying late into Thursday night in Northern Ireland’s capital while visiting Irish League Premiership side Larne, who had just signed his close friend Ro-Shaun Williams – a former youth player at United.
The episode comes as yet another unwanted distraction for Ten Hag at Old Trafford, with the Red Devils languishing down in eighth in the Premier League table at the midway stage of a campaign in which Rashford has managed just four goals.
TV broadcaster and journalist Morgan believes Rashford has been a ‘fantastic role model’ with the work he has done off the pitch with child poverty, though feels the England attacker has hit the ‘self-destruct’ button with his recent behaviour.
‘Letting your hair down is one thing but going on 12-hour benders and drinking tequila like it’s going out of fashion when you’re not scoring goals, when you’ve already had disciplinary issues, seems to be extremely ill-advised,’ he told talkSPORT.
‘I’d preface it by saying that Marcus Rashford has been a fantastic role model until this part of his career. All the stuff he did about child poverty was amazing and he deserves great credit for that.
Morgan believes Manchester United should be ‘concerned’ by Rashford’s antics (Picture: Getty)
‘He’s a young man with many great qualities and he’s also a fantastic football player.
‘Last season he was electrifying and people were talking about him being one of the best players in the country, if not the world.
‘This season he looks a completely different player, his life off the pitch appears to be going off the rails and if I was a United fan, where you haven’t won the league in a decade now, to see one of your top players behaving like this in what appears to be a self-destruct mode would be extremely concerning.’
Rashford was left out of Ten Hag’s squad to face Newport in the FA Cup (Picture: Getty)
Morgan, a lifelong supporter of Arsenal, believes the days of footballers being able to misbehave in such a manner are long gone as the modern game is ‘completely different’.
‘I think we don’t really have players at Arsenal that do this anymore,’ he added.
‘We used to have a lot, we used to be the world leaders in players that like to party and then win trophies. You look back to the glory days of the early 1990s and that was the way football was.
‘The difference now is that football has changed dramatically, it’s a completely different game now.
The England international has managed just four league goals this season (Picture: Getty)
‘These guys are top athletes, they treat their bodies like temples, the game is played at a ferocious speed, there are so many games and you just don’t have that time that the older players used to to behave like this.
‘If it was an Arsenal player, I think you’d give them one or two chances but if they keep doing it then I think most Arsenal fans would go: “They’re more trouble than they’re worth, get rid of them!”
‘I’m seeing a lot of United fans saying that today. If Marcus was scoring goals for fun then fine but he’s not he’s barely scoring a goal either.
‘You’ve got a combination of a top player who is wasting his talent and I think there’s not much leeway in the modern game to do that.’
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Asked if he would take Rashford at Arsenal, Morgan replied: ‘No, we don’t need him.
‘We’ve got two brilliant wingers in [Bukayo] Saka and [Gabriel] Martinelli. What Arsenal need is a striker.’
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