Why Manchester United letting Marcus Rashford go is yet another admission of failure – and what it reveals about the damage the Glazers have done to a once proud tradition, writes OLIVER HOLT

There was something about seeing Marcus Rashford in an Aston Villa shirt on Monday that felt all wrong. It almost felt as if it were someone else. A different person. 

The red of Manchester United has always been part of Rashford’s identity. He has been wedded to it. And now, there he was in claret and blue.

I know it’s only a loan but it doesn’t feel as if there is any way back to United for him and I’m sorry, but that felt sad, too.

That is not a comment on Villa, by the way. Villa are a great club that is on the rise again. This is not about them.

It is just that this is not the way Rashford’s career was supposed to go. Not if you’re a football romantic anyway.

His Old Trafford exit at the age of just 27 may have become inevitable and United fans may have lost patience with him but it still feels like another admission of failure in a decade of failures.

Another connection has been lost. The club has moved another step further away from where it wants to be.

How did it come to this? Rashford was supposed to be United for life. He was supposed to be a throwback. He was a symbol of the club and its revered youth system.

He was a symbol of hope and pride amid all the antipathy towards the Glazer family and the grieving for the loss of the supremacy that United once held in English football.

For a long time, Rashford embodied the hope of United fans that they could climb back to the summit of the English game.

He is a local lad, too, a kid who came up through the ranks, an academy product like so many of the great ones.

And now that he’s gone, it feels even more like a sign that something has been mismanaged at Old Trafford. Rashford was a link to the kernel of the club.

He was a link to the Class of 92 and the greats that came before them. Now that he has gone, it feels as if that link is weakening.

Kobbie Mainoo is another link but there was talk that he, too, would be sold in this January window. Alejandro Garnacho and Toby Collyer are also academy products, but not in the way Rashford was.

The academy was once at the heart of the club. Under the Glazer family’s ownership, it feels like that bond has weakened.

At the Emirates on Sunday evening, Arsenal’s 5-1 hammering of Manchester City was driven by the contribution of Myles Lewis-Skelly.

It was capped by a wonderful goal from Ethan Nwaneri. In the wings, waiting to return next month, is Bukayo Saka.

Together, those three players represent the intoxication of youth at Arsenal. Three players who have grown up at the club and should be at the heart of the team for years to come.

It is the same at Liverpool where Trent Alexander-Arnold, Conor Bradley and Curtis Jones are just three of the youth products firing the first team.

I don’t blame Ruben Amorim for what has happened. Rashford’s form has been poor for some time and the United boss seems to believe the player’s attitude is a symptom of a wider malaise at the club.

There have long been suggestions that Rashford has lost his focus. Some say he is troubled. A year ago, he famously missed training after a night out in Belfast under Erik ten Hag.

I’m not sure that excuses the way the new United manager has spoken about Rashford. I like Amorim and, in general, I like his style and I think he will get things right at Old Trafford.

But whatever he thinks about Rashford, someone who has given so much to the club over close to a decade deserves a bit more respect than the public scorn Amorim has directed towards him.

It is also worth remembering what Rashford achieved in 2020 when he was aged just 22. He did something special. He used his platform and his fame as a United player to do something important for people who needed his help.

He started a campaign for free school meals for children in families struggling to make ends meet and convinced the government of the day to provide vouchers throughout the summer holidays. The scheme was later extended. It helped close to two million kids.

There is a lot of cynicism in our world but there was not too much about what Rashford did in those months after the first Covid-19 lockdown. Not at first, anyway.

He did something selfless, which is rare in an industry where players often have to be single-mindedly selfish to have a chance of succeeding. That counts for something. It still counts for something.

By then, he was already a hero at United. Managers came and went in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era but Rashford rode with the changes and kept scoring. By the time he was 25, Rashford had scored 63 league goals for United.

Back then, he was still on target to be one of the greatest goalscorers in United’s history. Maybe one day there would be a statue of him outside Old Trafford just as there is one of Sir Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and George Best.

Rashford was the standard-bearer for United’s new generation, the jewel in the crown at the club. And even though United were struggling to recreate former glories, Rashford was the soul of the club, young and gifted and from the heartlands.

I found it hard to imagine him ever leaving. Maybe if Barcelona or Real Madrid came in for him, which seemed likely in the early years of his career, then he might be tempted. 

But there was a chance that he’d be a one-club man, too, and that records would fall before him.

Instead, Rashford has fallen. It is hard to see his move away from United in any other way even if Villa are a better team and a far more functional club than the monolithic mess Rashford has left behind him.

In an era when United were overtaken by City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal, Rashford remained a symbol of hope for United fans for a long time.

But United’s galloping dysfunction seems to swallow everyone up in the end and now it has claimed him, too.

THE ESTABLISHMENT COMES FOR US ALL, ZLATAN

Remember the scene towards the end of Quadrophenia when Jimmy finds out the hero he thought was an anti-establishment rebel works as a bellboy at the Grand Hotel in Brighton?

I thought of it when I was walking through the underground station at King’s Cross on Sunday afternoon and saw Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s face on a billboard promoting a financial services company.

I guess lions like prawn sandwiches, too.

WHY THIS MAY FINALLY BE RORY’S YEAR 

Rory McIlroy won the first PGA Tour event of 2025 with a two-shot victory at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at the weekend.

I may have heard this voice before but something tells me this could be a big year for the Northern Irishman.

Last year was his season of missed opportunities but he was always going to be too good to be defined by that.

The Open is at Portrush this summer, a course he knows and loves, and even if he missed the cut the last time it was played there, he will surely be a contender this time.

And if he holds his early season form, this might just be the year he finally wins The Masters and completes his career Grand Slam.