Manchester United’s players of the month over the years have been names such as Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes. Those were days of complete dominance, with back-to-back league titles more of an expectancy than a hope or dream, and hurricane performances a run-of-the-mill occurrence.
Those days may seem long gone right now, but United will hit those heights again, and that will likely come about due to the bright future of the Red Devils’ youthful current squad.
One of those squad members, Marcus Rashford, has been in the club’s youth system for years – and been a stellar performer since his debut against FC Midtjylland back in February, when he scored twice.
Whilst he may not have kept up that goals to games ratio, he did seal the Manchester derby last month, which has gone a long way to the young Mancunian being voted Manchester United’s player of the month for March here on readmanutd.com.
We ran a Duel to decide on the award, with the other options being Chris Smalling, David de Gea and Anthony Martial. Rashford won 63% of his duels, with David de Gea coming second boasting a 58% success rate, Anthony Martial in third place with 47% and Chris Smalling the last of the four with 26%.
We also ran a poll to crown United’s goal of the month for March. Again, there were four options, with the Red Devils having scored four goals. The winner was Juan Mata, with his beautiful late free-kick against Watford winning 39% of the vote (at the time of writing)
Marcus Rashford’s first Manchester derby goal came a close second with 38% of the vote – and Anthony Martial’s goals won 13% and 10% of the vote – somewhat surprisingly, his Europa League penalty against Liverpool received almost the same praise as his equaliser against West Ham in the FA Cup.
