"PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT RASHFORD"

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho launches a strong defence of Marcus Rashford, saying that the English forward has played an "incredible amount of minutes"...

Rashford has been rumoured to be unhappy at United due to the small amount of minutes he has had affecting his development.

The 20-year-old has only started once for Mourinho's side this season, whereas with Gareth Southgate's England squad, he scored twice in as many games from heavily featuring in both games.

Mourinho does not believe that the England international isn't getting enough game time and provided the journalists (pre-match press conference) with statistics to prove his point.

"In the season 2016/17, Marcus Rashford played 32 Premier League matches, 11 Europa League matches, including the final, three FA Cup matches, six League Cup matches, including the final, 53 appearances," Mourinho informed everyone.

"If you want to take the minutes of play, he played 3,068 minutes. If you want to divide that by 90 minutes of the matches, he played 34.2 matches in 90 minutes.

"In the 2017/18 season, he played 35 Premier League matches, eight in the Champions League, five in the FA Cup, including the final, three League Cup matches and the European Super Cup final.

"He played a total of 52 matches with 2,676 minutes. If you divide that by 90, it gives you 29.7 matches.

"So with me in two seasons, he had 105 appearances, 5,744 minutes, 63.7 matches of 90 minutes including five finals so the people that are speaking about his minutes I think they are a bit confused."

Mourinho also had a dig at some of United's competitors who have recently compared Rashford's development to other young English talents.

"Marcus Rashford is not Dominic Solanke (Liverpool). He is not Ruben Loftus-Cheek (Chelsea). He is not Dominic Calvert-Lewin (Everton)," Mourinho added.

"He is Marcus Rashford - a Manchester United player, with an incredible number of appearances and an incredible number of minutes played at the highest level in the best possible competitions.

"So Manchester United supporters, for you and just for you to know what we are doing with Marcus Rashford, with Luke Shaw, with Jesse Lingard, with Scott McTominay, that is what we are doing here."