IAN LADYMAN: If you come for Marcus Rashford then you had better be sure and you had better not miss – and Erik ten Hag didn’t

Sir Alex Ferguson was a tough man when it came to discipline, but that doesn’t mean he was always fair. No, the great Manchester United manager was not always honest.

Take Ryan Giggs and David Beckham for example. They were far from wild as they developed into senior players. They had their moments, but didn’t regularly give Ferguson cause for concern or wonder.

Yet they got it from their manager and often in full view of everyone else.

“He would regularly pick me and Becks out for outings,” Giggs told me five years ago.

‘We always got it more often than the rest. During a pre-season in America he went for me in front of everyone. I was furious, but he told me it was a trick because the younger players would learn that if he was allowed to attack me, no one was safe. He knew what he was doing.’

Football has changed a lot since Ferguson introduced it almost eleven years ago, but some things remain the same and the need for discipline and personal responsibility is one of them.

If a manager allows players to lose sight of the line that should never be crossed, he is in trouble. For a manager to have the control he needs, a team of footballers must bend to this whim, rather than the other way around.

Fair, reasonable or otherwise, it’s about power and who has that power. Erik ten Hag is retained at modern United. It is the results that have undermined him in his second season at the club. If United’s new co-owner Jim Ratcliffe decides to move him at the end of the season, that will be the driver.

United are three unbeaten. Newport, Wolves, West Ham. Admittedly not the biggest name to overcome, and Sunday in Aston Villa could tell us more about whether Ten Hag’s team will actually turn a corner this time or just continue going around in circles.

However, these three victories were preceded by a triumph of significance, a triumph of discipline and control, with Marcus Rashford at the center.

Recently, former United captain Roy Keane said on the ‘Stick to Football’ podcast that Rashford was an ‘easy target’ for criticism, when the opposite is true. Rashford is not an easy target, whether you are a supporter, journalist or even his manager.

Because of Rashford’s status at Old Trafford, because he is a product of the youth academy and because of the work he has done with schoolchildren during the pandemic, Rashford is actually quite a difficult person to criticize. There will always be opposition, always people willing to accuse you of ulterior motives. In other words, if you’re coming for Rashford, you better be sure and you better not miss it.

Ten Hag was sure and didn’t miss. He became aware of Rashford’s drinking sessions in Belfast two weeks ago and confronted him about it, both publicly and privately. Rashford was left behind as United won the FA Cup at Newport and was soon fined two weeks’ wages.

A lot of people didn’t like all this. They saw it as another example of Ten Hag being overzealous in criticizing his players. They suggested that he should have kept the company in-house and secret, despite the fact that five pages of explosive and detailed reporting in the Sun newspaper had made all that virtually impossible.

So yes, Ten Hag took a stand, just like he did when he took out Jadon Sancho earlier this season. But then something happened. Ten Hag brought Rashford back into his team when few expected him to for the game against Wolves and the 26-year-old scored after just three minutes.

United won 4-3 that evening and last weekend Rashford played 90 minutes as his team produced perhaps their most complete performance of the season by beating West Ham 3-0.

So it seems that Ten Hag is right about this. Obviously we won’t hear much about it. When something goes wrong for players, they have an army of agents and PR sniffers briefing them on their behalf in a transparent and desperate attempt to shift blame and evaporate the smell of bad behavior. Some people even fall for such nonsense.

However, managers don’t really have this at their disposal. Gone are the days when top coaches spoke to reporters off the record to increase the level of context, perspective and understanding. Clubs do not allow this. It makes them nervous.

So the only PR that people like Ten Hag have comes in the form of results. The Dutchman is not a particularly eloquent talker anyway. He’s not terribly charismatic. All he has to bring to the table is his body of work at United. That may have to improve if he wants to survive the summer.

But Ten Hag played well with Cristiano Ronaldo last season, he played well with Sancho last autumn and now he also plays well with Rashford. Some people will argue that they don’t see it that way, but that’s largely because they aren’t very willing to look at it.

The Premier League will semi-automatically avoid offside

The Premier League is unlikely to use semi-automated offside technology next season as they believe it is not perfect.

Good enough for the World Cup. Good enough for the Champions League. Not good enough for us. Foreign.

Light the Wembley Arch for El Tel

The Football Association will no longer light the Wembley arch for social or political purposes following the outcry following their decision not to do so in support of Israel last October.

However, they remain free to do so when it comes to football, and when Brazil arrive for a friendly next month, it would be fitting if they did so in memory of Terry Venables.

Venables, who passed away last November, boosted our game as England manager. The summer of 1996 was one we all remember and not just because England came close to reaching the final of the European Championship.

We remember it for the way England played, beating the Netherlands 4-1 in the group stage. We remember it for Paul Gascoigne’s goal against Scotland. We remember it because we almost beat Germany in the semi-finals.

That time of our lives wasn’t perfect. There was still a lot wrong with our game then. But Venables and his England team made us forget all that for a golden month. It is for this – and many other reasons – that Venables needs a fitting tribute on March 23.

If we don’t light the Wembley arch for Terry, when will we?

Inter Miami’s Messi tour fails in the Far East

Miami’s pre-season trip to the Far East should have provided guaranteed wins as Lionel Messi was in the touring party.

Inter Miami’s pre-season trip to the Far East should have brought guaranteed wins as Lionel Messi was in the touring party.

But the visit ran into trouble when Messi was not deemed fit enough to play in a match against a Hong Kong XI that had sold 38,000 tickets at more than £100 each.

Inter Miami owner David Beckham was booed as he spoke after the match, while Hong Kong city dignitaries then made their own feelings known.

And this is the problem with the American MLS. It is the big foreign players who give it some shine. Without them, it’s just another minority sport in a country smothered by the reach of American football, baseball and basketball.

Messi, no matter how long he stays, won’t change this. That includes the 2026 US World Cup. Sometimes you just have to accept your place in line and move on.