Conveniently forgetting that he was tackled by Vincent Kompany a fraction of a second later, here are a few words on how Marcus Rashford made Nicolas Otamendi look like a poor man’s Eliaquim Mangala during a dull first half of the Manchester derby.
Assuming you weren’t watching it (you probably were), we’ve even gone to the trouble of accompanying these words with a few poor quality, blurry screengrabs, too.
We could’ve lifted a video clip off Twitter, but television companies pay lots of money to broadcast football matches such as this one live and they get quite cross when people start sharing three second videos on social media. Sorry about that, this’ll have to do.
These images are so blurry, it might not even look like Marcus Rashford and Nicolas Otamendi but hey, we’re over 100 words in now, so you might as well stick it out.
Here’s the first of the images, which shows Rashford and his spindly, 19-year-old legs hurtling towards the touchline as he attempts to keep the ball in play. Otamendi is in close pursuit, his hands in Rashford’s back.
At this point, with little in the way of support ahead of him, Otamendi might expect Rashford to try and hold the ball up and play it back to one of his teammates. Virtually on the touchline now, the youngster improvises, flicking the ball over the Argentine’s head with the outside of his right foot.
Rashford was away, leaving Otamendi treading treacle behind him, desperately pumping his tattooed arms in a bid not to look like he was ready to ask his agent about a move to the Chinese Super League.
See you later.
Thanks for coming.
As we say, a very dull first half.
