Sam Allardyce should not hold back Marcus Rashford from England squad

It is funny sometimes how everything turns out. On 27 January this year Manchester United Under-18s went to Manchester City on the back of 10 successive defeats, their worst run of form since the team was established in 1932. They lost 2-0, though it could have been more. The team were bottom of the North Division of the Under-18s’ Premier League, without a win for four months, and it is fair to say there wasn’t too much to get excited about the boy in United’s attack with pimples on his forehead and braces on his teeth. “He had a shocker,” came one verdict.

After that, we all know what happened when Marcus Rashford was elevated, almost by default, to the first team a few weeks later and the damage he has been causing to opposition defences ever since. Rashford’s introduction at Hull City last Saturday felt like a throwback to the United of yesteryear, back in the days when the most thrilling sight in football was watching Sir Alex Ferguson’s teams chasing a game, and when the Premier League resumes it might be that Manchester City’s first team fear him a lot more than their academy one used to. Martín Demichelis never started another game for City after facing Rashford in the last Manchester derby. Demichelis lost Rashford for the decisive goal and was substituted eight minutes into the second half to put him out of his misery. Rashford had made him “nervous”, Manuel Pellegrini said of a World Cup finalist and four-times Bundesliga winner, with 50 international caps for Argentina.

When Rashford can have that effect on opponents it certainly feels strange, to say the least, that Sam Allardyce is not hoping for a sprinkling of that stardust in his first match as England manager and a waste, more than anything, that the player will turn out instead at the Weston Homes Community Stadium, home of Colchester United, on Tuesday for an under-21s’ assignment against Norway.

Allardyce’s misgivings about the player’s lack of first-team starts would be easier to understand, perhaps, if he had expressed them 20 games into the new season, rather than two, as it was when the under-21s’ squad was named. It doesn’t make great sense that the decision was made so early and, for such an experienced manager, it is not easy to understand why Allardyce did not wait until the Hull game to see if it threw up any clues. Had he done so, he would have been reminded this is a player of uncommon gifts – a player who has outgrown the under-21s without actually playing for them once.

It does, however, highlight the potential problem for Rashford this season now that Zlatan Ibrahimovic forms the arrowhead of United’s attack and inevitably that has turned a light back on José Mourinho’s perceived reluctance to trust young, homegrown players.

Perhaps with good reason, too, if we recall Mourinho’s introductory press conference at Old Trafford and the attempted deception – classic José – when he produced a sheet of paper containing 55 names to nail “the lie” that he never brought through academy players only for it to materialise, on closer inspection, that his list included Arjen Robben, Mario Balotelli, Mikel John Obi and various assorted ringers.

Robben, to put it into context, had won 10 caps for Holland, played in more than 100 games in the Eredivisie, won the league with PSV Eindhoven, won his country’s young player of the year award and starred in Euro 2004 before joining Chelsea for £12m, aged 20.

Various others on Mourinho’s list had made their debuts elsewhere and, as for the legitimate ones, only 11 had played 90 minutes or more under his management. Ten had played fewer than 10 minutes. Three had appeared for a single minute and, not for the first time with Mourinho, an old quote came to mind from Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former president of France. “Jacques Chirac,” he said, “could have his mouth full of jam, his lips can be dripping with the stuff, his fingers covered with it, the pot can be standing open in front of him. And when you ask him if he’s a jam-eater, he’ll say: ‘Me eat jam? Never.’”

To be fair to Mourinho, he is probably entitled sometimes to point out Louis van Gaal gave first-team debuts to 14 players from United’s academy and when it came to the crunch it did not spare him from the sack. The bare fact, however, is that in Mourinho’s three months at Old Trafford 13 of the club’s academy graduates have already left for other clubs. Eight have been permanent deals. Five have gone on loan and it would not be a huge shock if this is the season that breaks the remarkable run of matches, currently 3,790, of United having at least one homegrown player in their team, or on the bench, in every match since 1937.

Unfortunately for United, the conveyor belt at Old Trafford is not what it once was in terms of quality, rather than quantity and, as Nicky Butt confessed the other day, in his new role as head of academy, a club that once prided themselves on being the most prolific nurturers of young talent in English football “veered off course a little bit”.

Ed Woodward, United’s executive vice-chairman, ordered a “root and branch review” last season and it brings to mind a conversation at Old Trafford towards the end of Van Gaal’s time and the revelation from inside the dressing room that some of the senior players were not exactly impressed by the next generation. Rashford was the exception – the only player they enthused about – and, however brief it was, he was also the only one in England’s colours to emerge with any distinction from that infamous night against Iceland in Euro 2016 when Wayne Rooney could be seen fumbling over the ball, Raheem Sterling’s confidence looked broken and L’Equipe gave Joe Hart, Gary Cahill and Harry Kane (and Roy Hodgson, for that matter) three out of 10 in their match ratings. Rashford might have been on the pitch only five minutes but in that time there were three occasions when he took the ball past a defender – more dribbles than anyone else had managed all night.

It is a shame therefore that Allardyce would rather hold him back and a bit of a recurring theme if we think back to how, a couple of months before Euro 2016, Rashford could not even get in the under-21s because Gareth Southgate wanted to “take the heat away” from a player who had scored five goals in his first eight United games. “It was a bit early for him, exposure-wise,” Southgate explained. Others might consider that someone freely scoring goals in the Premier League, including the winner in the Manchester derby the previous weekend, would not have been too fazed facing Switzerland Under-21s at the home of Thun, in front of 2,589 spectators.

A measure of caution has to be applied, of course, but not too much when Rashford is older than Michael Owen was at the 1998 World Cup and than Rooney was at Euro 2004, and has scored in his first matches for Van Gaal, Hodgson and Mourinho. Allardyce might yet be next on that list but, for the time being, the bright hope of English football is on his way to Colchester and it is difficult not to feel it might be England, not United, who are guilty of underusing him.

Agüero makes case for TV refs

Judging by the positive vibes from Italy’s friendly against France, the first-ever international match to experiment with a video referee, the time is clearly coming when the technology is introduced properly, with an extra official wired up in a van outside the stadium (bringing not just clarity on various decisions but also, no doubt, future chants of “Who’s the bastard in the van?”).

No doubt the idea will polarise opinion when the common perception it that stopping games to check video footage will delay the flow and – admittedly, not the greatest argument – quite a few of us actually like a dash of controversy and regard refereeing mistakes as part of the fun.

It is certainly easy to have misgivings if you think back to the tackle on Luke Shaw, playing for Manchester United against PSV Eindhoven last September, that broke his leg in two places and the analysis of some of the various former referees who now work in the media. Howard Webb’s verdict was that the PSV player, Héctor Moreno, had made a hard but fair challenge. Graham Poll argued it was a red-card offence and Mark Halsey went even further, saying it was a “horrendous challenge” and “absolutely baffling” that the Italian referee, Nicola Rizzoli, did not take action. All of them had seen the various camera angles; the fact they could not agree just shows the potential for problems.

The doubters among us might, however, reflect on Sergio Agüero’s clash with Winston Reid last weekend when a video referee would presumably have been able to clarify what happened and a red card could have been shown to the Manchester City striker.

Agüero will miss City’s next three matches because of the FA taking retrospective action but, as Pep Guardiola said, it will still be 11 versus 11 in each of those games. West Ham were the real losers given that the offence took place in the part of the match after Michail Antonio’s goal had brought the score back to 2-1, with a quarter of an hour still to play and the home team starting to look edgy.

Nobody can know what might have happened if Agüero was sent off but West Ham’s chances of finding an equaliser, rather than going on to concede a third goal, would clearly have been improved by having an extra man. That is the real injustice from the Agüero saga other than the insinuation, with City protesting the player’s innocence, that it must have been pretend agony that put Reid on the floor.

Poyet will surely find a new home

That was a nice line in irony from Michael Owen – and let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it was deliberate – in his analysis of Jürgen Klopp’s transfer business at Liverpool. “I like the way Klopp clears out players he doesn’t need,” Owen declared on Twitter, perhaps drawing on his memories at Newcastle United, Manchester United and Stoke City. “No messing. Nothing worse than having senior pros floating round not contributing.”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all levity on deadline day and, however confident Tottenham might be of bringing out Moussa Sissoko’s Euro 2016 form, rather than the Newcastle equivalent, it doesn’t reflect well on the £30m signing if the allegations emanating from Merseyside are true that he did not even answer Ronald Koeman’s calls to explain why he would not be moving to Everton, after all.

Mario Balotelli’s departure from Liverpool, bundled out of Anfield’s back door on a free transfer to Nice, is depressing in another way and, speaking of wasted talent, it probably says everything for Ravel Morrison’s broken reputation that a player with his exquisite talent could not find a taker in England’s top two divisions.

On a different note, it was sad to see Diego Poyet cutting his ties with West Ham, even if it has quickly become apparent that there are plenty of clubs willing to offer him a way back. It is only two years since Poyet, then 19, won Charlton Athletic’s player-of-the-year award and was showing the kind of refined touches that made it something of a coup for West Ham when they signed him on a Bosman deal that summer.

He has lost his momentum since then but at least there is hope. The people at West Ham all speak highly of him and the FA was extremely keen for Poyet to align himself to England before his decision to play for Uruguay Under-20s last year. He is still young and there is plenty of time for all that rich potential to flower.