Rashford leaves it late as Manchester United finish the year in second place

Marcus Rashford’s 93rd-minute deflected strike ensured Manchester United took all three points against a resilient Wolves side in their final Premier League game of 2020.

An excellent defensive display from Wolves couldn’t keep out Rashford as he bagged his first Premier League goal at Old Trafford in over 14 hours since netting against Southampton in July.

As Sir Alex Ferguson watched along in the stands, ‘Fergie Time’ came to life when Marcus Rashford cut past Rayan Ait-Nouri and fired home past ‘keeper Rui Patricio. The forward has scored 14 goals in all competitions this season, with eight of them coming after the 70th minute.

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The late winner took Marcus Rashford’s tally of 90th minute winners for United in the Premier League to an impressive three – more than any other player in the club’s history.

Moreover, the last-gasp strike to lift Solskjaer’s men into second was the club’s latest winning goal in a league game at Old Trafford since September 2009, when Michael Owen’s famous toe-poke clinched a 4-3 win over noisy neighbours Manchester City.

A class act on and off the pitch in 2020, Rashford told Amazon: “The full-back [Rayan Ait-Nouri] had a cramp a few minutes before so I just had it in my head I wanted to go at him and make him chop and turn and just see if I could make something happen and thankfully in the end we got a deflection.”

“For us, we can’t look too far ahead. We are a team that is still doing a lot of work on ourselves. We have to take it one game at a time but if we can keep finding ways to win like this we will see where we are at the end of the season.”

Bruno Fernandes added yet another assist to his everlasting tally of seven so far this season, and now has a total of 32 goal contributions in 29 Premier League games for United. Not bad for someone who only takes penalties.

Since the Portuguese made his competition debut, he holds the most assists in the league (14), and enjoys the second most goals in the league (18), two behind Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah.

Ivorian Eric Bailly also recorded an impressive defensive showing, with his third appearance in the last six days for Manchester United – a remarkable improvement from his injury-riddled past. The centre-half controlled the ball with ease and looked comfortable at all times, leaving Adama Traore without a sniff.

United fans awarded Bailly with the Man of the Match award in a Twitter poll by @utdreport, collecting an impressive 59 percent of the vote. The defender won 100% of tackles, completed a pass accuracy of 94%, recovered the ball 11 times and marked four interceptions.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s troops extended their unbeaten run in the Premier League to nine games, and host Aston Villa at the Theatre of Dreams on New Years Day.

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