With the striker well on his way to getting 20 goals in the league this season, it should provide food for thought for the ex-England man
Manchester United academy coach Colin Little has hailed Marcus Rashford for proving the pundits wrong, having been previously criticised for not being efficient enough in front of goal.
The 22-year-old has enjoyed his most productive season to date in the Premier League, scoring 14 goals in just 22 appearances – surpassing his previous best of 10, which was achieved last term and took him 33 outings to accumulate.
Calling out Michael Owen – a former United striker – Little says he is frustrated to see pundits claim that players are born with a scoring instinct that cannot be taught.
“I remember Michael [Owen] doing a talk with us and it was mentioned. He literally said – you are born a goalscorer,” he told the club’s official website.
“I saw Graeme Souness and Jose Mourinho in the TV studio saying the same thing – you can’t teach people it. They were saying name one player and I was screaming at the TV!
“It’s a load of rubbish. Cristiano Ronaldo was a tricky winger. Before Pep Guardiola got to him, Raheem Sterling used to only score about six or seven a season. You could maybe say Mason [Greenwood] is more natural but maybe Michael is right that he was born a goalscorer.
“He says no coach ever taught him, apart from Steve Heighway teaching him the near-post run, but maybe he is an exception and freakish.
“So his way of looking at it was – I was born to do that so everybody else must have been. But others have to learn it.
“Marcus has got 19 goals and it winds me up because that Aston Villa one [when his header hit the woodwork first and was eventually given as an own-goal against Tom Heaton] would have made it 20.
“I’m sure Michael once said Marcus was not a 20-goal-a-season striker, so I was looking forward to ringing him up about it!”
Little, meanwhile, does not believe that Rashford is a traditional No.9 but rather operates as a modern attacking player – and has shown himself capable of finding the target even in this role.
Indeed, Little believes that the development of the 22-year-old is underscored by the variety of goals as well as the quantity of them.
“People would say Marcus won’t be able to score the right amount of goals on the left but he has got so many different ones now. You can tell a striker is getting better by the variety of goals he scores; from his head, left foot and right foot,” he said.
“If you actually look through his goals, he is scoring a variety. You add on penalties and free-kicks and then your numbers really start to go up.
“Balls were going in the box and he was stood in all sorts of different areas but not the right place to score. So the phrase I use is a forward has to be an eternal optimist. You have got to believe the cross is going to arrive at that place.
“That right area is called prime real estate and you have got to get there. He worked on it and is in the right places now.”
United are hopeful of getting back to Premier League action in June, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side fifth in the standings on 45 points.
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