Ex- Manchester United right-back and club legend Gary Neville has confessed he "would hate" for Marcus Rashford to leave the club having spent his entire career to date at Old Trafford.
The forward has endured what has been arguably his most difficult season in senior football in a campaign that has seen him miss the opening months due to surgery on a shoulder injury before failing to find any kind of consistent form on the pitch. Rashford has scored just five goals across all competitions so far this term, well off the pace for a United attacker.
Rashford is thought to be exploring every option when it comes to his club future amid reports from the Manchester Evening News that the "phone hasn't stopped ringing" from other outfits keen on enticing the 24-year-old away from Old Trafford. With that being said, it is claimed that the forward still harbours hopes of turning things around at United.
La Liga giants Barcelona are one of the many sides rumoured to have registered an interest in the England international, though in what would be an incredibly shocking twist the same aforementioned report claims Liverpool have made it known they are also fans of the forward.
Neville has urged United's No.10 to pause any kind of decision on his future until the end of the current campaign given the club are still in the race for a top-four finish. "I get the fact he's not playing at the moment, his form is poor," he told Sky Sports. "He's drained of confidence. No one knows what's happened to him.
"He looks completely uncomfortable and unhappy on the pitch. When he came on against Atletico Madrid, again, he just looked like there was nothing there. He needs to get to the end of this season. He needs to regroup, reset and probably just, you know, I had a period like that in my football career at Manchester United.
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Neville went on to shed light on his own difficulties at the club he would go on to spend the entirety of his playing days with. "In 2000 I had to get to the summer and re-evaluate. Maybe I wasn't under as much scrutiny at the time.
"But I do feel like Marcus Rashford needs to just go away this summer. Four weeks where he reassesses himself, reassesses what he wants in life, who he wants around him. He needs to reassess what's important to him and get back to doing what he was doing before, which is playing football really well with that freedom.
"He's not playing with freedom at this moment in time. I'd hate to think that an academy player at the age of nine, that's got great talent, would leave just after his first bad period, even though it's probably been 12 to 18 months now."
