The Marcus Rashford discourse has dominated the discourse on social media and press conferences with the Manchester United forward the key topic of conversation.
Rashford finally made it back into the squad for the Newcastle game after being dropped for four consecutive games but that hasn’t settled the nerves.
Ruben Amorim didn’t choose to bring him on in that game and while he had his explanation for doing so, eager to play it down, it did nothing to douse the flames.
With the January window open, the focus will be squarely on the player and his dynamic with the team manager and team because his future looks increasingly shaky.
In the meantime, he has said his side of the story in response to a report that alleged he’s taking steps to accelerate his exit from Old Trafford.
Marcus Rashford hits back
Marcus Rashford has generally not been afraid to go on social media and engage with what he considers is false news being spread about him.
While that has backfired at times too, just giving his critics more fuel to add to the fire, setting the record straight is sometimes necessary.
Rashford did just that by posting a response to one such story on his Instagram which alleged that he’s talking with an agency to accelerate his Man Utd exit.
He said: “Been a lot of false stories written over past few weeks, but guys this is getting ridiculous – never met with any agency and don’t have any plans to…”
He added the screenshot of the concerned story with the headline and its writers in full display to call them out.
Rashford needs to tread a fine line
Most of the time, inflammatory stories serve a singular purpose which is to hopefully get a reaction out of the player and drive more people to check out the original material.
It is commendable that Rashford has set the record straight on this one but it’s a slippery slope because as he says so himself, there are millions of stories written about him every day.
Posting rebuttals to each can’t be good for his mental health, which is probably already somewhere near its nadir due to the events surrounding his professional career.
The best way to silence all the critics and negative stories is to just get out there and perform well because once that happens, everything else takes care of itself.
That’s not something he has done so while calling out false stories on the odd occasion is correct, the real answer to his problems is in his own hands.
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