Sign up to Miguel Delaney’s Reading the Game publication despatched straight to your inbox without spending a dime
Sign up to Miguel’s Delaney’s free weekly publication
Erik ten Hag promised to deal with the absence of Marcus Rashford after the England striker missed Manchester United’s 4-2 FA Cup victory at Newport.
Rashford reported unwell on Friday after reportedly spending the earlier night at a Belfast nightclub.
“He reported ill,” United boss Ten Hag mentioned after watching his aspect survive a large fright in South Wales as League Two Newport fought again to 2-2 after conceding twice contained in the opening 13 minutes.
“The rest is internal matter. I deal with it, we will deal with it.”
Ten Hag mentioned there was a “no good culture” when he arrived at United in 2022 and he has encountered disciplinary points throughout his Old Trafford tenure.
United misfit Jadon Sancho returned to Borussia Dortmund on mortgage earlier this month after falling out with the Dutchman.
Asked if Rashford was one other instance of that “no good culture”, Ten Hag mentioned: “I don’t go in this case. We talked before about it, we played a good game, and now we move on.”
Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer known as for any concern to be sorted sooner fairly than later to keep away from Rashford’s abilities going to “waste”.
“There’s a huge talent in there with Marcus Rashford, we saw him be disciplined last season when he was late for a meeting, he actually missed a game,” the previous England captain mentioned.
“But something is clearly wrong either at home, or his relationship with the football club because he can’t keep doing this. He can’t waste his talent. It’s not right, he needs strong management, someone to get hold of him and say: ‘you know what, you get to the end of your career and you’ll have huge regrets’.
“You can’t have that and you don’t need that. It needs sorting and it needs sorting now – 30 goals last season and four this season.
“When I see him play, it looks a lot of the time as if it he’s got the world on his shoulders and for someone with that amount of talent, it needs sorting out and it needs sorting out now because he can’t waste it.”
United established early command towards opponents 76 locations beneath them within the pyramid, Bruno Fernandes and Kobbie Mainoo – with his first senior aim – producing wonderful strikes.
But Bryn Morris and Will Evans scored both aspect of half-time and United had been in peril of turning into victims of a seismic giant-killing act earlier than Antony and Rasmus Hojlund struck within the closing quarter.
Ten Hag mentioned: “The first 35 minutes it was very dominant. We did not give the opponent any chance and should have been three, four, five-nil up.
“Out of nothing they score a goal and straight after half-time again.
“We have to be critical of bad defending in transition. Poor defending from the cross, it’s 2-2, and they turned it around.
“But you see how resilient we are. We stayed calm, went back in our game, got the third and fourth goal, so job done.”
Casemiro, Lisandro Martinez and Luke Shaw had been all again within the beginning line-up after harm, whereas Harry Maguire made a late cameo for his first look since December 12.
“I know the character from Licha (Martinez), Casemiro, Luke Shaw, (Raphael) Varane, Bruno, Antony, (Alejandro) Garnacho, Hojlund. All fighters,” Ten Hag added.
“Sometimes you are in this situation. It was a bad pitch, but we totally dominated them for 35 minutes.”
Newport belied their lowly standing of sixteenth place within the fourth tier with a dedicated efficiency sprinkled with some attacking moments of actual high quality.
Exiles boss Graham Coughlan revealed Ten Hag had given him “a nice little bottle of red wine” after the sport, and admitted that he was considering a serious upset after United had been pegged again.
Coughlan mentioned: “I was dreaming at two-all. We gave ourselves a mountain to climb first 10 or 15 minutes.
“You can’t start a football game like that against that quality of opposition.
“They hit us hard, they were clinical and we learned quickly what the Premiership is all about in that first 10 or 15 minutes.”
On United’s late present costing County a profitable replay, Coughlan added: “It was just unfortunate we couldn’t reach our cup final and go back to Old Trafford.
“I thought we had them at two-all. They were rattled. They could have gone under, and that’s a strange thing for a League Two manager to say.
“But the Premier League class shone through, so full credit to United.”
Discussion about this post