Conjecture but I suppose there’s a reason Villa were actively pushing for him to leave on loan to bring in Digne, despite being one of their better players the year before.
Could also explain why we took a while looking at alternatives to him in the following summer despite looking really good for us and having a cheap option on him.
A midfield of Rice, Bellingham and Gerard would be great, in theory.
I’d also go for Rooney in on the left, Rio in for Maguire and obviously Ashley Cole. Possibly unfair to not have Beckham or the Raheem Sterling of a few years ago in this xi too.
@The College DropoutHe averages around 9-10 league goals a season. He’s at his best is when he’s deployed as a counter attacking threat and is full of confidence (like you said). A super confident Rashford gets on the plane, for sure but even then he’s not a player that helps you control games or gives enough defensively for his strengths to be worth it imo.
He has his uses but doesn’t bring enough to the table to be considered an “elite talent”. He can have times where he looks like he could be knocking on the door of being world-class but it’s situational. The lad’s certainly got some very good attributes but on average he’s a 10 goal a season winger (which isn’t bad at all tbf) with a weak mentality and very one-dimensional tactically.
Rashford is ridiculously overrated. Besides being lightening quick and hitting a ball really well he’s practically useless. He’ll get goals based off those attributes alone but the lad has zero football iq, work rate or off the ball skills. Classic flat-track bully build.