Alan Shearer has told Marcus Rashford he “can’t keep wasting his talent” as he stated the striker “needs strong management” and for “someone to get hold of him” suggesting Erik ten Hag is not that.
Rashford has struggled for form this season, in stark contrast to last term. Indeed, in the last campaign, the striker scored 30 goals in all competitions.

Halfway through this term, he’s on just four goals. He seems to have compounded his own problems, as reports have surfaced about him going on a night out in Belfast just hours before a training session.
Erik ten Hag stated Rashford “was ill” and when interviewed just before Manchester United‘s FA Cup tie with Newport, the manager stated it’s an “internal matter” that he’ll “deal with,” without going into detail.
Shearer feels that sounds problematic for the striker, and has urged him not to throw away the talent he has.
“If it’s an internal matter, you’d think something is up,” Shearer said on BBC.
“There’s a huge talent in there with Marcus Rashford. We’ve seen him be disciplined last season when he was late to a meeting before a game but something is clearly wrong – either at home or in his relationship with the football club.
“He can’t keep doing this, he can’t keep wasting his talent because it’s not right.”
Related video: Erik ten Hag vows to deal with Marcus Rashford absence as Man Utd win at Newport (Daily Mail)
Shearer then suggested that Ten Hag might not be a hard enough character to get Rashford into line, as he stated he needs that sort of influence.
“He needs strong management, someone to get hold of him and tell him there’ll be huge regrets come the end of his career if he continues doing this,” Shearer said.
“You can’t keep doing it, it needs sorting now. Thirty goals last season, four this season.
“When I see him play, it looks like he’s got the world on his shoulders so it needs sorting now because he can’t really deal with it.”
At 26 years of age, Rashford should be approaching the best years of his career, but he currently looks nowhere close to being at the level he can be, and that’ll be a concern, but at the moment, doesn’t look to be for him.
READ MORE: Newport 2-4 Man Utd: United scrape through nervy FA Cup tie to reach fifth round

Man Utd: Romano gives verdict on ‘tense’ situation after manager banishes loanee from first-team

Fabrizio Romano has provided an update on Manchester United’s loanee Hannibal Mejbri, who is enduring a rough start at Sevilla.
The 21-year-old shone while on loan with Championship outfit Birmingham City in 2022/23 but barely featured for Man Utd during the first six months of this season.
After being restricted to just one Premier League start this season, it was announced earlier this month that he has joined Sevilla on loan. The La Liga outfit also has an option to make this deal permanent in the summer for around £15m.
Hannibal made his debut for Sevilla off the bench last weekend as his new side were hammered 5-1 by second-placed Girona.
Sevilla are enduring a horrific season as they are 17th in La Liga and just one point clear of the relegation zone.
Former Watford boss Quique Sanchez Flores is their manager and he was unimpressed by Hannibal’s debut against Girona. Speaking following the defeat, he has confirmed that the loanee needs “the necessary space to understand” what it means to play for Sevilla.
“After being with him, talking to him and having seen his first minutes in Girona, we are going to give him the necessary space to understand where he is, that he is at Sevilla and what it means,” Sanchez Flores said.
“He has to know where he is and we want to see him. We have spoken with him and we believe that he has to have some time to learn, we wanted to give him space, time for him to see things from the outside and then he will return to the squad.
“In the end they are kids who have come and suddenly land in a huge club like Sevilla in circumstances of maximum demand. And they need a bit of location. And that location may be seen better from the outside than from the inside. You should take a step to understand what we want.
“Let’s see if the boy applies himself and I think that in the end he will understand perfectly what we want.”
TRANSFER GOSSIP: Liverpool target ‘favours’ Man Utd transfer; Arsenal, Chelsea learn Osimhen’s ‘chosen club’
In response to these comments, Romano revealed that there “was some tension in training” between Hannibal and his new Sevilla teammates but “everything has been clarified”.
“Things have not got off to a great start for Hannibal Mejbri at Sevilla, but what’s really going on with the Manchester United loanee and manager Quique?” Romano told Caught Offside.
“My understanding is that it is not a specific incident. There was some tension in training between some players and Hannibal too, but everything has been clarified and Hannibal spoke directly to the manager to keep the situation quiet.
“It’s all good now, though it’s obviously in not easy in general at Sevilla because their season has been horrible. They remain just a point above the relegation zone in La Liga.”

Man United grateful for Klopp diversion after dodging FA Cup humiliation at Newport

To make the season look not as bad as it’s been, we have to win – or try to win – this trophy.’
We’re going straight in with that Bruno Fernandes post-match quote not to take the mick, but because it is powerfully correct in its quiet-part-loud honesty. Bruno, speaking in a second language straight after the enormously flattering 4-2 win at Newport, may not have intended to be quite so brutally honest. But you can’t quibble with that honesty.

He’s right, of course. Even winning this grand old cup would only paper over the cracks. Or, more fittingly on this pleasingly old school afternoon of cup action, tinfoil cup over the cracks. It would only ‘make the season look not as bad as it’s been’. It will take a significant upturn in league results for the season to actually be anything like acceptable.
But despite the final result here, it was another afternoon to leave you with absolutely no confidence this United team can deliver that uptick. There will have been relief for multiple reasons that Jurgen Klopp is currently dominating the news cycle to such an all-encompassing extent. First, because a hated rival is losing a really good manager who has flipped the long-standing Fergie era dynamic between those two great clubs on its head. Second, because the Marcus Rashford farrago is now less of a Crisis Club Talking Point than it would surely otherwise have been had January continued to meander on the quiet course it had followed before Friday’s bombshell from Anfield.

Nevertheless, this was a game United will have approached with a degree of trepidation. Not because they will have honestly thought they might lose, but because games like this are the ultimate no-win situation for a club of United’s stature in their current predicament. There really is no result in a game like this that can improve matters meaningfully, but plenty that can exacerbate or further highlight the problems at hand.
That said, after 15 minutes it did look like United might be able to secure one of the unlikely scorelines that really did elevate the mood. At the very least, having eased into a 2-0 lead against opponents guilty of the classic error of affording illustrious but vulnerable opponents too much respect.
They were nice goals as well, which helps, crisply finished by first Bruno and then Kobbie Mainoo. Goals scored, too, by players to remind you that not everything at United is entirely and unutterably grim quite yet.

But there was another telling Bruno moment shortly after. At 2-0 up, it would be easy to think the game was already up. Certainly at that point it was hard to see quite how it could become mortifying for the visitors, who appeared to have been rewarded for naming a strong side by setting themselves up for an easy afternoon.
Bruno cares deeply, though, and while that can often manifest unfortunately it can also reveal a lot about the state of the club. When Alejandro Garnacho was brilliantly set away down the left by Lisandro Martinez, he lashed a shot against the bar when both Bruno and Rasmus Hojlund were free in the penalty area for tap-ins. Garnacho’s strike was a sweet one, but also selfish. Even at 2-0 up against lowly opponents, Bruno tore him a new one for his decision-making.
He knew this wasn’t done. He knew things rarely are for a United side that finds itself so entirely reliant on this competition for a fig-leaf (a tinfoil fig-leaf?) of respectability in large part because of an inability to defend two-goal leads in Europe.

And sure enough, United found a way to make this mortifying. Sure, there was an element of fortune in the way Newport levelled given both their goals either side of half-time featured deflections. But it was only an element of fortune. Bryn Morris’ shot was sweetly hit and on target even before flicking off Martinez. It still required attention. And the deflection on Will Evans’ poacher’s finish after a fine move even less significant.
More than that, though, was that Newport deserved to be back in the game. From looking like they might go four or five up before the break, United were unwilling or unable to maintain those standards and offered hope and encouragement to lower-league opponents who should have by now had none.
Late goals from a largely wretched Antony and an almost embarrassingly unserved Hojlund given the calibre of opponent meant United avoided total humiliation, but it became just another game that leaves you with more questions than answers around this team and manager and what they can achieve. Even a kindly-looking fifth-round draw at Bristol City or Nottingham Forest offers no guarantees for a United team this fragile and this easily rattled.