Can Manchester United’s part-time duo fill Marcus Rashford’s boots?

Anthony Martial has not completed a league game since January 2021; Antony has the same creative stats as Harry Maguire. Now Erik ten Hag needs both to step up in the absence of his top scorer

Erik ten Hag was defending his attackers, sticking up for Anthony and Antony. As Manchester United face their immediate future without the injured Marcus Rashford, the attention has shifted to the rest of his first-choice forward line. Anthony Martial’s fitness is criticised, as is Antony’s form. The Frenchman could mark his reunion with Sevilla by beginning a match for the first time in almost three months. “He is ready to start a game,” said Ten Hag, and as his first-choice striker has made it to the middle of April with his total of starts still in single figures, that felt newsworthy in itself.

But Ten Hag finds it easy to praise Martial’s performances when he is actually available. He can point to Saturday’s goal against Everton. He often does cite the victories over Liverpool and Manchester City, in two of the few games when he has been able to call upon the centre-forward. Martial’s average of a goal every 117 minutes this season is excellent: the problem is that there have been too few minutes. The injury-prone striker has not completed the full 90 in a Premier League game since January 2021 or for United since later that year. He did not start and finish a match on loan at Sevilla last season, either, though he did at least figure for the first 102 minutes of a Europa League quarter-final second leg before being removed in extra time.

Ten Hag has been understandably cautious in the Frenchman’s latest comeback. “We don’t have to force things but we are careful, of course,” he said. The manager probably shares some of the fans’ frustrations about the forward’s fragile frame.

But if Martial was an issue he inherited, Antony – or, as Ten Hag tends to call him, Antony dos Santos – is one he created. Like Martial, he is not a 90-minute player, but not on grounds of fitness: Ten Hag has substituted him in 12 of the 16 league matches he has started. The Brazilian is shaping up as the most mercurial figure at Old Trafford, somehow combining the superb and the utterly unsurprising, the magnificent and the mediocre. He became the first player ever to score in his first three Premier League games for United but has found the net in none since. He has won United’s goal of the month four times already this season but only scored three other times. His winner against Barcelona was, the Carabao Cup final apart, perhaps the highlight of their season but he can feel underwhelming. He is the £86m winger without a top-flight assist. Nor is that the kind of freakish statistic produced when others miss chances: 15 United players have a higher expected assists total this season, including the famously uncreative Aaron Wan-Bissaka. Go on expected assists per 90 minutes and Antony is tied with Harry Maguire.

“Of course we expect from front-line players they are not only a threat but also they have effect in the final third and he has to work on that,” said Ten Hag. He signed Antony from his former club Ajax and criticism of the winger can feel more personal; without Ten Hag’s endorsement, he would not have become the second most expensive player in United’s history.

Antony has regularly found himself replaced in the second half (Getty)

The Dutchman argued his protege is the man for the major occasion – those goals of the respective months came against Arsenal and Liverpool, Barcelona and Real Betis – but the counter-argument is that Antony is the man for too few other matches. He is a specialist in the spectacular and Ten Hag denied that Premier League defences have worked him out. “You mention he is not scoring in the Premier League but he did score against Betis, a really important goal, and he did score against Barcelona, the winner, and you can’t say they are not big games,” he rationalised. “He has scored also in cup games. If you can do it in such games you can also do it in Premier League games so I am not concerned about that but, like many more players, he has to step up as well.”

A concern is that Antony always steps inside, that cutting in to shoot makes him predictable and explains his lack of assists. Another is that even when he has the beating of a defender – as he did with Newcastle’s Dan Burn and then Everton’s Ben Godfrey, who he tormented – that is not translated into creating chances. “He is still a very young player,” Ten Hag said of the 23-year-old. “He can kill opponents. We have seen on Saturday when the manager of Everton brings on another player at half-time because he is killing the left full-back.”

Does that render Antony the ineffectual killer? Ten Hag argued not, seeing him as both a warrior and a talisman. “My experience with him is he is a fighter and he likes challenges and with him in the team, teams are winning,” he said. “That is why he is in the Selecao and why he is selected often in the starting 11 of the Selecao.” Yet the more topical issue is not why Brazil pick him but why he is in the United team, whether he deserves to be and if, minus the main man in the attack, Antony and Anthony can compensate.