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Manchester United legend Wayne Rooney has expressed his disbelief at Erik ten Hag’s decision to substitute Marcus Rashford at the break, during the club’s 3-3 Europa League draw against FC Porto.
Rashford was easily United’s best player in the first half and had registered a goal and assist by the time both teams went down the tunnel.
However, to everyone’s shock, the winger was withdrawn during the interval and replaced by Alejandro Garnacho. The result of that personnel change was that United lost their primary source of threat and gave the Porto defence an easier time.
After the final whistle, Ten Hag shockingly claimed that he took off Rashford due to rotation reasons.
A recent report covered by The Peoples Person relayed that some of the United players have been left confused by Ten Hag’s puzzling rotation policy.
Now, Rooney has slammed Ten Hag’s decision, insisting that it was a “crazy” choice not to keep Rashford on the pitch for the second period.
Rooney said on the Stick to Football podcast, “Some of the changes he is making… You never see top teams changing their centre-backs during the game – or the back four – and that happens on a regular basis.”
“The Rashford one… That was the best I’ve seen him play [v Porto] for a long time and to take him off at half-time and say we’ve got another game at the weekend is crazy.”
“I guarantee on this international break you see videos of him training with a coach away from the training ground – so if he can’t do two games in a week, he should have been resting.”
Roy Keane delved deeper into Ten Hag’s preference for swapping centre-backs. Lisandro Martinez and Matthijs de Ligt started together against Porto but were dropped for the next clash at Villa Park. For the meeting with Unai Emery’s men, the United boss deployed Harry Maguire and Jonny Evans at the heart of his side’s defence.
Keane remarked about this, “He’s been chopping and changing that [centre-back pairing] even during games, but that seems to be the norm now, he doesn’t stick with a settled back four.”
“He may say off the back of it, they had a tough game in Europe, but surely part of the demands for playing for any big club is that you can play two or three games per week and cope with it.”
When asked about Ten Hag’s use of fringe players, Keane stressed, “You can’t keep going back to Eriksen and Maguire.”
“Maguire and Eriksen have been back in the team the last few weeks, so you’ve gone back to the lads who are part of the problem, not just on their own, of course not.”
“The new lads need a chance, they need to get a couple of games and months to build up relationships, play games to get sued to each other.”
United’s next assignment will see them face Brentford, at Old Trafford on Saturday 19 October.
Feature image Octavio Passos via Getty Images
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