Ralf Rangnick was unable to rely on Anthony Martial in Saturday’s league game against Aston Villa (2-2). The Manchester United manager reveals that the 26-year-old attacker should have been on the match squad but refused to play. Martial is dissatisfied and wants to force a departure from Manchester.
Rangnick was already unable to have Cristiano Ronaldo and Marcus Rashford in Birmingham, who are slightly injured. The interim manager would have liked to call on Marital. “But he didn’t want to be in the selection,” Rangnick said after the press conference. “Normally he would have been in the match selection, but he refused. That is why he had not traveled with us yesterday (Friday, ed.).”
Martial has just recovered from a muscle injury that has sidelined him since early December. The Frenchman is no longer planning to play for United. At the beginning of January, Sevilla came on the market to hire the wing striker, but the Spaniards were unable to take over his salary. United also asks for a rental fee for the purchase of sixty million euros, the amount AS Monaco received in 2015. At the moment, nothing concrete seems to be going on around Martial.
United led 0-2 at Villa Park thanks to two goals from Bruno Fernandes, but gave away the victory in the final phase. “It’s very hard to find positives after this,” Rangnick told Sky Sports. “We’ve had periods where I thought it was our best game since I got here. We were completely dominant. We’ve made strides, but there’s still a lot of things we need to improve on. The plan was to put them in the center zone, and we did that for the first thirty minutes. So that was good.”
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