Jamie Carragher was on Monday Night Football this evening and at the top of the programme the discussion was tilted towards Manchester United's Marcus Rashford.
The striker has been the subject of much debate as of late with the likes of Alan Shearer and Jamie Carragher himself arguing that the England man will not fulfil his dreams of becoming a striker at Old Trafford. Jose Mourinho launched a defence of his treatment of the player, recently listing off the youngsters' minutes at the club under the Portugese:
In 17-18, he played 35 Premier League matches, eight in Champions League, five in FA Cup including the final, three League Cup matches and the European Super Cup final. He played a total of 52 matches with 2,676 minutes, if you divide that by 90, it gives 29.7 matches, so with me, in two seasons, he had 105 appearances, 5,744 minutes, 63.7 matches of 90 minutes, including five finals, so the people that is speaking about these minutes, I think they are a bit confused.
Asked for his response to Mourinho's comments, Carragher clarified his original statement about Rashford needing to leave the club, arguing that if he wants to play through the middle, it is an inevitable step:
I'm not talking about how many minutes Rashford gets. The minutes Rashford gets, appearances he's got for a 20 year old lad at a club the size of Manchester United. He is getting great minutes.
What I don't like... whether Jose felt that I threw away a lazy comment, and I think the fact that probably for 12 months now people have said 'Jose Mourinho doesn't give kids a chance, Rashford must leave', I think that's lazy punditry.
The reason I said what I said, because I was talking more as a centre forward. For all the stats that were given by Jose, they're all spot on. But another one that's spot on is that since Jose's come in he's only started 12 times as a centre forward in the Premier League. And he burst onto the scene as a striker, he wants to be a striker. Now he may have changed he might be happy playing on the left, he might be happy playing on the right, staying at Manchester United, I don't really care!
My whole point was that is the most difficult position to come through as a top six club, because all of our top six clubs now, the manager has got to believe he has a striker that can win him the Premier League, and win the Champions League. And if you go through the teams Liverpool have got Brazil's centre forward, Man City have got one of the greatest centre forwards ever, Chelsea have two strikers that people have question marks over, one's a World Cup winner, the other one has played for Real Madrid and Juventus.
Arsenal have got two £50m strikers and United have got Lukaku. And I'm not saying that Jose Mourinho is wrong and that he should play Rashford ahead of Lukaku. He shouldn't, Lukaku is better than him. But if that lad wants to play centre forward, how does he do that? Does he have to move away and then maybe come back. The same as what Lukaku did.
Carragher went on to draw comparisons between Rashford and Danny Welbeck, and how Welbeck was utilised on the wing. He doesn't want the same thing to happen to Rashford where his versatility ends up working against his goal of becoming a top class striker:
He (Welbeck) came through at United as a centre-forward, then he was used on the left and the right, but then he ends up becoming a squad player. He moves to Arsenal, exactly the same thing happens. That’s what you don’t want.
"I agree with everything Jose Mourinho said, but that's not me backing down."@Carra23 responds to Jose Mourinho's comments on Marcus Rashford.
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