The 18-year-old has landed a blow to Arsenal’s Premier League title hopes with two well-taken goals in the space of three minutes at Old Trafford – an instinctive first-time finish and a smart glancing header.
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Arsene Wenger has refuted the suggestion that his Arsenal team was beaten by a Manchester United team bursting with youth and inexperience.
The Dutchman added: “His performance was better than the first match”.
Rashford continued to be a thorn in the side of the Arsenal defence in the second-half and played his part in United’s third goal.
He said: “Obviously Marcus is going to get the headlines but I thought Guilly was terrific at right-back and especially after getting a yellow card against somebody like Sanchez”.
“We have a small squad because then you can give youngsters a chance”.
The Arsenal manager admitted being “surprised” at Rashford for “the timing and intelligence of his movement”. The things I asked of him, he scores again – four goals in two matches – that is an average that is unusual! “I’ve seen some debuts but none quite like that…”
And that loss for Arsenal was compounded by the two teams already above us, Tottenham and Leicester City, winning their own matches late on.
Danny Welbeck pulled one back for Arsenal, but Ander Herrera re-established the cushion and Mesut Ozil’s reply was not enough to salvage anything for the title-chasing visitors.
“I watched him [Rashford] last night and he was quite impressive”, Wenger said.
Rashford also scored twice on his first-team debut against FC Midtjylland in the Europa League on Thursday. As from now we only think about Watford. “But that maybe benefited me because I wasn’t thinking about the game too much, so it’s been good”, the Manchester-born player said.
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“We still have a chance, so we will go for it until the last minute”.
