There is a reason this conversation has restarted so quickly. Three league games into the season is not enough to make sweeping declarations, but it is enough to spot whether a player looks alive again. Marcus Rashford does. According to reporting from The Athletic, his display against Everton provided the clearest indication yet that Manchester United may have recovered a version of the forward that once terrified defenders in open space and changed matches on his own.
The key point here is not that Rashford has already returned to his 2022-23 level. He has not. He has no goals and no assists yet. The key point is that his game looks purposeful again. That matters more than the raw output at this stage. For a player whose decline had come to feel prolonged, messy and perhaps irreversible, the early signs are about movement, conviction and intent.
Against Everton, there was one action in particular that set the tone. Rashford took a floated pass from Bryan Mbeumo on the left, killed it with the outside of his right boot, shifted it again in the same motion and went past Merlin Rohl with the sort of ease that used to define his best afternoons. Then came the calm cutback into a dangerous area. The move did not end in a goal, because Diogo Dalot missed the first effort and Matheus Cunha sent the follow-up over, but the sequence was the story. It looked sharp. It looked fast. Most importantly, it looked natural.
That is what had been missing for too long. Rashford had moments in the period after his 30-goal campaign, a big strike against Manchester City, a fine finish against Liverpool, a smart contribution in the FA Cup final build-up, but those flashes did not add up to continuity. By the time he left, first on loan to Aston Villa and then to Barcelona, it felt like United had lost more than a forward. They had lost one of the few players in the squad capable of destabilising a defence by himself.
Rashford dribbling has purpose again
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