(AFP) - The Manchester United striker continued his scoring hobby, especially after the World Cup finals, by scoring a brace for his team against Leicester City, to emerge victorious 3-0 on Sunday in the twenty-fourth stage of the England Football Championship , while Tottenham rose to fourth place with its victory. On its neighbor West Ham, taking advantage of Newcastle's loss to Liverpool, 0-2, on Saturday.
Manchester United strengthened its chances of occupying one of the first four positions, after raising its score to 49 points, compared to 41 for Newcastle IV, who has a postponed match.
The "Red Devils" may even be able to enter the struggle for the title because their team is 5 points behind leaders Arsenal and 3 points behind their neighbor Manchester City.
Rashford suffered a lot last season before the appointment of the new Dutch coach, Eric ten Hag, but the latter succeeded in extracting the best potential of the player, thus becoming the most influential this season, as evidenced by his scoring 24 goals in various competitions.
Ten Hag said after the match, "Leicester played in a great way in the first half and we owe it to our goalkeeper De Gea, who saved two dangerous chances."
"We fixed things up in the second half and put on a great show," he added.
Manchester United started the match pressing, but Leicester soon created two dangerous chances, the first of which was a pass from Nigerian Kelechi Iheanacho, who passed the ball towards Harvey Barnes alone, but Spanish goalkeeper David De Gea was on the lookout.
Then De Gea excelled in pushing Iheanacho's powerful header.
Manchester United succeeded, contrary to the course of the game, in opening the scoring by Rashford, who was alone with the Leicester City goalkeeper and hit a ball creeping out of his reach (25). Rashford became the first player to score in 7 consecutive matches at Old Trafford since Wayne Rooney in 2010.
Manchester United appeared in a completely different face in the second half, after the entry of Jaidon Sancho instead of the young Argentine winger Alejandro Garnacho, so the offensive front moved in greater harmony.
And Rashford succeeded in breaking the offside trap to add the second goal after a forward pass from the Brazilian Fred (56).
The goal is the sixteenth in Rashford's last 17 matches after the World Cup, including 10 goals in 7 league matches.
Sancho concluded the scoring after a wonderful counter-attack and exchanged the ball with the Portuguese team captain, Bruno Fernandes, to be followed by the first left-hander into the net from close range (61).
It is noteworthy that Manchester United is the only team in the five major leagues that is still fighting on four sides, as it will play the League Cup final next Sunday against Newcastle, and before that the second leg of the play-off in the Europa League against Barcelona, Spain, after returning with a valuable draw from the stronghold of the latter, “Camp.” No" 2-2, and West Ham will meet at home in the FA Cup competition.
On the other hand, Leicester City started the season poorly, but it regained its balance recently, specifically by beating Aston Villa 4-2 away from home, and then inflicting a severe defeat on Tottenham 4-1 in the previous stage.
Tottenham dusted off its harsh loss to Leicester City 1-4 last week by beating its neighbor West Ham 2-0.
Tottenham rose to fourth place with 42 points, ahead of Newcastle by one point, but the latter has a postponed match.
And continued the absence of Tottenham coach Antonio Conte from the bench because he did not fully recover from surgery to remove the gallbladder about 10 days ago.
Tottenham was the best side in the first half, but all his attempts were shy.
Things were different in the second half, as the pressure of the landowners yielded a first goal after a wonderful game in which the ball reached the Brazilian right-back Emerson Royal, who followed it crawling into the net (56).
Soon, South Korean substitute Heung-min Son, who replaced Brazilian Richarlison, added the second after an elaborate pass from team captain Harry Kane (72).