Barcelona loanee Marcus Rashford has delivered a scathing assessment of his parent club, Manchester United, criticising the club’s lack of a clear plan, identity, and strategy over the past decade since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement.
Speaking on The Rest Is Football podcast, the England international argued that United’s long-professed “transition” period has not even properly begun. “People say that we’ve been in a transition for years but to be in a transition you have to start it,” Rashford said. “The actual transition hasn’t started yet.”
He pointed to arch-rivals Liverpool under Jürgen Klopp as a model for United to follow, highlighting their patience and commitment to a single plan. “When Liverpool went through this, they got [Jürgen] Klopp and stuck with him,” he noted. “To start a transition you have to make a plan and stick to it.”
Rashford, who played under eight different managers during his time at Old Trafford, blamed the constant changes in coaching and strategy for the club’s subsequent failures. “We’ve had that many different managers, ideas and strategies in order to win that you end up in no man’s land,” the forward sighed.
He contrasted this with the Sir Alex Ferguson era, where clear “principles for the whole academy” created a unified and understood “Manchester United way” of playing. “If your direction is always changing you can’t expect to win the league,” he stated bluntly.
Rashford’s candid comments come after he was exiled from the first-team squad by current manager Ruben Amorim due to a “perceived lack of work ethic in training,” a situation that ultimately led to his current loan move to Barcelona. His public criticism is a damning indictment of the club’s post-Ferguson era, painting a picture of an institution lost in a strategic wilderness.