One of the few upsides of football's hiatus for Manchester United is whenever it returns they should be able to field their strongest XI.
Whatever that is, Marcus Rashford is in it. Before Rashford sustained a back injury in January, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had adjusted his role by mainly deploying him on the left in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Rashford’s pace and eagerness to drift centrally made him ideal in that he had the pace and skill-set to get into goalscoring situations.
He netted 14 Premier League goals in just over 2000 minutes - which breaks down at 0.63 goals per 90 - and no player under 26 can better that return this season. These are impressive numbers, although his goalscoring was slightly skewed by five penalty conversions.
Irrespective of Rashford's penalty duties, there is still an overperformance compared against his combined non-penalty expected goals (npxG) which totals 8.3 - according to FBref. This means that Rashford has still been lethal in front of goal and converted more efforts than what would have been expected based on those chances created for him.
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Beyond the goals scored, this use of Rashford in a wider position also unlocked a more creative version of the 22-year-old. By January, he had registered four league assists - one fewer than what he had managed in the whole of last season - and a deeper delve into his creative numbers highlights just how important he has been in this department for United.
This season, Rashford ranks third in the division for goal-creating actions with an average of 0.67 per 90. These are the two offensive actions directly leading to a goal, such as passes, dribbles and drawing fouls. The above graph is filtered to players who have played either as a forward or as both a midfielder and a forward throughout the season, as per FBref.
