Marcus Rashford: ‘Out on the pitch. That’s where I get my happiness’

Marcus Rashford is reflecting on becoming the lethal leader of Manchester United’s attack after a lost season that the 25-year-old says: “I can’t get back.”

The starkest way of comprehending the turnaround: in 2021-22 Rashford scored five goals in 32 appearances; this season he has 24 in 36. Sunday’s double in the 3-0 victory against Leicester at Old Trafford took him to a career-high count for a campaign and he is the force Newcastle are desperate to stop in Sunday’s Carabao Cup final.

Yet in the close season Rashford appeared to be heading for the exit. Ole Gunnar Solskjær had been sacked the previous November and by March the last of Rashford’s five strikes were scored and the interim manager Ralf Rangnick said the England international could leave if he wished.

Context is needed. Rewind a year or so before then and the boy from Wythenshawe had been playing with the pain of a shoulder injury that was finally operated on in summer 2021. It meant no pre‑season and Rashford came back into Solskjær’s listing side, and an unhappy changing room, when he returned in October. United fans booed Rashford for failing to follow up a loose ball in an FA Cup tie against Aston Villa the following January and there was public despair at his confidence disintegrating to such an extent that he was cast as a certainty to miss when through on goal or even fail to control a regulation pass.

Not any more. Now Rashford is adored and expected to bury every chance. He offers an honest explanation why. “I don’t think anyone – apart from the people at the club – knows how long I was dealing with those [injury] issues,” Rashford says. “It wasn’t just one season, it was a period of time where every day was tough and you have to sacrifice