Gary Neville has slammed Ralf Rangnick's decision to leave Marcus Rashford on the bench for the majority of Manchester United's 1-1 home draw against Leicester City.
Rashford has endured a difficult season in a campaign that has been littered with injuries and goal droughts, but it still came as a surprise to Neville that the England international had been overlooked by United's interim manager. Rangnick deployed an unconventional 4-2-2-2 formation for the visit of the Foxes, but he was without his usual centre-forward option in Cristiano Ronaldo.
"Unfortunately, he [Ronaldo] had some flu like symptoms before training yesterday so he didn't feel well enough to train,” Rangnick confirmed before kick-off. "We then decided to send our doctor to his home this morning to check if he felt any better, which he didn't unfortunately."
With that in mind, many would have assumed that Rashford would have filled the Ronaldo-shaped void from the off - but he was benched in favour of Bruno Fernandes. The Portugal midfielder operated as a make-shift centre-forward for much of the match.
Rashford remained on the bench until just shy of the hour mark, by which time it was clear United needed to freshen things up from an attacking perspective. "It’s quite incredible. You’d have thought given he was training every single day that United would’ve been in over the past two weeks," Neville claimed.
The commentator was referencing the fact that Rashford was snubbed from the most recent England squad, meaning the 24-year-old is likely to have been working closely with Rashford for the last fortnight. Yet, he still failed to catch the eye of the German.
HAVE YOUR SAY! Did Rangnick get it wrong by dropping Rashford against Leicester? Comment below
Neville noted his confusion over Rashford's omission before a ball had even been kicked, explaining: "It is the same players that played against Manchester City where we saw Pogba and Fernandes up front in that 4-2-2-2, it is a staggering situation.
"United start the season with Cavani, Greenwood, Ronaldo, Rashford and they end up with no centre-forward against Man City and Leicester and the fact that one of those forwards is on the bench in Marcus Rashford.
"We talked about Harry Maguire before in terms of coming off of a tough period, but Marcus Rashford is having a massive low - to not be in that United team today is saying something, for them to play without a centre-forward at home against Leicester when he's had a couple of weeks break as well is a big decision by Rangnick."
