RASHFORD READY TO STEP UP HIS RECOVERY FROM HOME

Manchester United star Marcus Rashford has given some insight into how he is stepping up his recovery from a back injury.

The 22-year-old was originally set to miss a large chunk of the season run-in, after suffering a double stress fracture in January, but the ongoing coronavirus pandemic means all football has been suspended indefinitely.

With lockdown in the UK extended until May at the earliest, Rashford is getting back to full fitness at home, which, as he reveals in the latest edition of UTD Podcast, isn’t easy.

“Yeah it’s good,” Marcus replies, when asked how he's getting on. “Obviously, I need to step it up a little bit now, but it’s difficult to do with not being in the training ground.

“I’ve just added a few bits and pieces – I’m pushing myself on the bike, and doing more core work and upper body, so just day-by-day really, taking it slow.

“It’s difficult. Obviously you can train at the training ground every day and that’s the peak of your fitness. To try to emulate that at home, it’s almost impossible.

“Everyone’s just trying to get as close as they can to that. Some of the lads have been out running every day and have programmes from the club. But even doing that, running [5,000 or 6,000 metres], maybe it’s more than what you’d run in the training session, but it’s not the same spike in intensity. So it’s difficult to try to mirror that.

“You’ve just got to try to do as best as you can. You know, in yourself, when you’re as fit as you can be and, during this time, it’s definitely tough.”

In a normal season, Rashford concedes that he would have been coming back into the first-team picture - and looking ahead to Euro 2020 involvement with England - by now.

However, he admits that, on a personal level, it will benefit him in the long run to have a greater recuperation period than was first envisaged.

“Yeah, you know, for me, I was probably going to go back with the team towards the middle or end of April,” he adds. “But that would have been a push, obviously, because I didn’t want to miss the summer.

“I doubt I would have been 100-per-cent fit going into that tournament, or even finishing off the season, but that’s what we were aiming for.

“Obviously, since then, a lot’s happened with this virus so, for my body really, it’s been good to give it its full duration to rest.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the podcast, which also features United legend Paul Scholes and is available to listen to now, Marcus also pinpoints two men who helped him develop during his whirlwind career at Old Trafford.

Rashford’s first full season in the seniors (2016/17) saw him playing with legendary Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, as well as under Jose Mourinho, and he learned valuable lessons from both of these colossal figures.

“I played with Zlatan and it was just his mentality was beyond anything I’d ever played with before. He didn’t care what anyone would say or what anyone was saying about him. In terms of mentality, he was key to my development.

“If you remember that time when Jose was there and, as someone who’d played under him before, he knew you had to be a certain way to survive under him, and I think that was good.

“Do you know what? It was tough but, in five or six years’ time, I’ll look back to it and they’re the moments that give you that mental toughness and make you an all-round player.

“I think I’ve improved a lot and a lot of it is down to those two years under Jose. We had ups and downs but, when I look back on it, it was a tough period, but it made me a better player.”