Someone who has known Marcus Rashford for several years said they saw this coming years ago. That there was an inkling of not if, but when his Manchester United career would go into freefall.
They noticed a shift in demeanour in early 2022, around the time it emerged he was first considering a move away from United amid dissatisfaction under the interim manager Ralf Rangnick.
When Rashford settled on a "new challenge" nearly eight weeks ago, many believed he had Barcelona in mind. He will instead wear a different shade of claret down the M6.
A source aware of the negotiations said Rashford rejected more prestigious clubs than Aston Villa as he would not have to relocate. Rashford said: “I was lucky to have a few clubs approach me but Aston Villa was an easy decision.”
It is an easy commute for Rashford, or his former United academy teammate RoShaun Williams, who has been his driver. Some Villa players reside in Cheshire and socialise in Manchester city centre.
Villa were desperate for a striker and at ‘panic stations’, according to one agent. The sizable sale of Jhon Duran to Al Nassr for £64million paved the way for Villa and United to quickly conclude a loan for the remainder of the season.
It absolutely suits all parties. Can you name Villa's main left winger? No. Rashford will slot in there and switch to centre forward if Ollie Watkins, forced off at Wolves recently, is ever unavailable.
Rashford gets to work under an excellent coach in Unai Emery and plays in the Champions League knockout stage for the first time in three years. United are no longer saddled with a player whose training form was regarded as so inadequate that Ruben Amorim said he would have rather played his 63-year-old goalkeeping coach.
Villa are above United in the table but it's a less prestigious club that would never previously have been on his radar. If he was ever to leave United, it was supposed to be for Barca or Paris Saint-Germain. Not the 1996 Coca-Cola Cup winners.
Rashford was supposed to trump Wayne Rooney as United's record goalscorer and possibly Ryan Giggs's appearance record. It may be 426 appearances and 138 goals all-out for Rashford.
One of the privileges of covering United for the MEN is you are aware of the rough diamonds in the academy before outsiders. This correspondent reported on Rashford's first squad call-up, was in attendance for his first and only goal for the under 21s and was the first to spot he was about to make his debut on that uplifting night against Midtjylland.
Rashford captured the imagination with those two goals against Midtjylland in February 2016. He trumped that three days later on his full Premier League debut with two more goals against Arsenal. Any notion he was a flash-in-the-pan was dispelled that day. Rashford was in the team to stay.
There was the lad-vs-dad winner on his derby debut when he skinned Martin Demichelis, an electric match-winning performance against Liverpool when he denuded Trent Alexander-Arnold and that night in Paris with a 94th-minute penalty against PSG, the first of five ‘Fergie Time’ winners.
He was a national treasure during the Covid-19 pandemic with commendable campaigning for free school meals. To United fans, Rashford was the team’s poster boy, the Wythenshawe lad who rejected Liverpool and Manchester City as a kid at Fletcher Moss to fulfil the dream of pulling on the United shirt.
Rashford is the only United player to break the 30-goal barrier in a season since Sir Alex Ferguson retired. He started in four of United’s five triumphant post-Ferguson finals. When Rashford strolled through the mixed zone after the sweetest of FA Cup victories over City last May, he was clutching a bottle of champagne and a speaker blaring the song On One Tonight by Gunna.
The win, and Rashford’s role, seemed to secure his future. United’s decision then not to sack Erik ten Hag, who disciplined Rashford on at least two occasions, raised the issue as to whether a change of scenery was in Rashford’s interests. Six months later, he has accepted it is.
“I was lucky to have a few clubs approach me but Aston Villa was an easy decision,” Rashford said last week. “I really admire the way that Aston Villa have been playing this season, and the manager’s ambitions. I just want to play football and am excited to get started.”
Before the winter transfer window opened, there was speculative chatter about Arsenal. An agency source stressed that the Premier League's profitability and sustainability rules mean clubs have to go beyond due diligence when signing a player. Mikel Arteta was "never going to go near" Rashford.
Arteta purged the Arsenal dressing room of high-earners Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Arsenal have two competitions to play for and Arteta presumably had no intention of upsetting the apple cart with a player who has crossed United managers past and present and spent his final seven weeks in matchday exile. Deco, the Barcelona sporting director, was "not that fussed" about signing Rashford, a Spanish source said. But Barcelona are open to a permanent move in the summer.
Rashford's first and last appearances for his boyhood club elicited polar-opposite reactions from matchgoers. As the 18-year-old match-winning debutant against Midtjylland, he was mobbed by fans (and academy teammate Dean Henderson) in the Old Trafford family stand. In Plzen in December, he was booed.
There was no exchange between Rashford and Amorim when he was substituted in the Czech Republic. Two days later, Rashford was told to report for training at Carrington on Sunday morning rather than prepare for the Manchester derby later that afternoon.
There was a red flag with the Mancunian red when Rashford did not speak to the dedicated correspondents during pre-season training in Los Angeles in July. He was not the only mum one of the British contingent. Scott McTominay, Jadon Sancho and Aaron Wan-Bissaka, all difficult interviewees for different reasons, did not give interviews either. Mason Mount has not conducted any media sit-downs since he left Chelsea for United other than to MUTV.
Rashford was interviewed by two colleagues in San Diego a year earlier. Mid-question, he started tying his shoelaces. Then he left abruptly as one of the journalists started asking another question.
Affluence has changed Rashford. We became accustomed to saying "Marcus" in mixed zones only to draw a blank. A Carrington source is adamant Rashford barely spoke to some time-served staff at the training complex. Rashford’s representatives deny that.
Rashford was not always this surly or aloof. A few of us feared the worst when he turned up for an interview at Carrington two years ago and he left the engine on his sports car running outside. A member of staff dryly noted it was also the Premier League's Green Weekend initiative.
It has been occasionally awkward speaking to parents when they reveal their United-mad kid's favourite player is Rashford. "What is he like?" is the inevitable query. They idolise Rashford beyond football, with many children in Greater Manchester indebted to him for his free school meals campaign.
Rashford will doubtless have a more unflattering view of most of us who cover the club minutely. The irony of that aforementioned interview while his £280,000 McLaren 765 Long Tail was running was that he was engaging company and signed an autograph for a colleague's daughter.
Days after United were annihilated 7-0 at Anfield, the player Ten Hag chose to flank him at the press conference previewing the Europa League tie with Real Betis was Rashford. That signalled senior status.
It makes Rashford’s spiral all the more striking. That Belfast bender last year, when Rashford had a night out days before United’s season resumed against Newport County in the FA Cup fourth round, was serious enough for United to haul in Rashford's brother and representative, Dwaine Maynard, to Carrington. Maynard is not currently listed as a registered agent on the Football Association website.
Rashford started in the following game away to Wolves and scored after five minutes. The United fans celebrated with a witty rendition of “Rashford’s on the p**s”. Ten Hag later privately told interested observers he would have tried to move Rashford on if he had more forwards after the Belfast incident.
There were suggestions from multiple sources that Rashford considered joining the Stellar agency ahead of the transfer window but this was denied by an Instagram Story posted from Rashford’s account. It is not known whether Rashford posted this himself. Maynard accidentally sent a tweet intended for Rashford's Twitter account from the DN May Sports agency he runs in September 2021.
Sources who have dealt with Rashford believe he lacks expert guidance. His mother, Melanie, wrote about her son in The Times last year warning, “You always need to be wary of people’s intentions around you - sometimes people around you can be wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing.”
Some have latched onto Rashford as their meal ticket. But when he missed the penalty in the European Championship final in 2021 and was house-bound for days he admitted to a friend that hardly anyone had visited to check in on him.
Those who know Rashford say he is a good lad at heart and that he thrived with a structure. Some of those around him have not done him any favours. This correspondent has a cache of abusive emails sporadically sent over a three-and-a-half-year period by someone identifiably close to Rashford.
Rashford’s representatives maintain he did not go out the night before the Everton and Manchester City matches in December, nor that he went out in Manchester city centre after playing for United in their 5.30pm kick-off away to Bournemouth last April.
Rashford became a detached member of the United squad long ago. His infamous body language on the pitch, which has so irked matchgoers, was noticeable off it, too. He cut a lonesome figure waiting at Stockport Station for an away game at Fulham. While teammates congregated in their cliques, Rashford was at a distance.
One of Rashford's confidantes mentioned his body language in an effort to galvanise him. Many of his inner circle are not as objective and few appear to be willing to tell him harsh truths. "He is surrounded by yes-people," a source who has dealt with Rashford said.
One of the "yes-people" has spoken insultingly about Mason Greenwood, Jadon Sancho, Anthony Elanga, Antony and Rasmus Hojlund, at various times Rashford's rivals for roles in the United starting XI.
United used to tread on eggshells with anything Rashford-related. They were at pains to stress he had not been dropped for the away fixture at Chelsea in April even though he was the only change from the draw with Brentford five days earlier.
The club's willingness to cash in on Rashford in the summer required additional context from the United press office, sensitive over any backlash from Rashford's side. It was unnecessary as Rashford was unsellable a year into a five-year, £325,000-a-week package after scraping eight goals in 43 games.
That contract in July 2023 was the beginning of the end of Rashford's United career. Having scored 30 goals from the left wing in 2022-23, he was disgruntled that Ten Hag informed him he would be playing up front during the pre-season tour in the United States.
That carried on into the competitive season but lasted only two games. When Rashford was substituted at Tottenham, he yanked off his boot and launched it. He was involved in all three goals in a comeback win against Nottingham Forest a week later and then scored at Arsenal. But in the fifth game, a comprehensive home defeat by Brighton, friction between Mancunian and Mancunians in the stands was audible.
Club sources said it was an issue for Ten Hag that Rashford hired Caroline McAteer, an experienced PR who represented Cristiano Ronaldo, Jadon Sancho, Raphael Varane and Mason Mount at United. The optics seemed to drive a wedge between player and club.
Ronaldo forced his exit from United through an unauthorised interview where he said he had “no respect” for Ten Hag. Sancho publicly accused Ten Hag of saying something “completely untrue” and the winger was banished from the first-team building at United’s Carrington training complex.
"It must be frustrating for United fans to watch Rashford because, honestly, if he wanted to he could have destroyed us," an opponent who played against him last season said. "But he chose to not be in the game.
"He honestly had everything in his game to be the best. I think he needs something fresh where there’s real pressure on him and he’s not the main guy [so] that’s when he can shine."
United staff were duty-bound to back the manager. Ten Hag's handling of players who transgressed was nigh-on faultless and he disciplined Rashford over his ill-advised birthday party at China White on Deansgate hours after the Manchester derby defeat to City at Old Trafford.
Rashford was not papped by photographers but his car, with the 'MR' insignia plastered all over it, and the presence of familiar associates were giveaways. Teammates Wan-Bissaka and Tyrell Malacia rocked up.
Plenty of hardcore United fans had vented about Rashford in the past. Those at Gdansk Airport after the 2021 Europa League final had it in for Rashford and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer after United's defeat on a penalty shootout to Villarreal. As a local lad, he was held to different standards.
Solskjaer had run Rashford into the ground and resentment festered. Solskjaer came to the end of his tether managing Rashford.
Jose Mourinho encountered a “good kid” who offered no problems. Ralf Rangnick and Rashford rubbed up against each other like sandpaper. Rashford felt Rangnick treated him "like a kid".
Rashford scored the first goal of the Solskjaer and Amorim eras and got the winner in Ten Hag’s first victory. His 80-second opener at Ipswich Town in November suggested he would bedazzle another new coach. Three weeks later, he was banished.
The irony of Amorim's barb at Craven Cottage was that Rashford appeared the most eager to start training when the media were invited for a 15-minute open session four days earlier. Some of us were caught unawares as he hurtled past us to get on the grass to limber up with a keep-ball session. Yet United had no interest in keeping him.
