Paul Scholes has criticised Manchester United striker Anthony Martial as being unable to take instruction on board, describing his performance against Chelsea on Monday as ‘laboured’.
The Frenchman scored in the 2-0 win over the Blues, flicking in an excellent header just before half-time, but Scholes was not impressed with his overall display.
The former Red Devils star has criticised the 24-year-old for his poor work-rate, his lack of positional sense and for his football intelligence, in a pretty scathing assessment.
‘With Anthony Martial, it’s interesting, I don’t know if he’s a wide player, I don’t know if he’s a centre forward,’ said Scholes after the win at Stamford Bridge.
‘Ole [Gunnar Solskjaer] clearly thinks there’s a centre forward in there and he’s telling him to get in the box as often as he can.
‘Tonight he laboured at times to get in the box, he didn’t really bust a gut.
‘You shouldn’t need to [tell a striker to get into the penalty box], but if you’re Anthony Martial he looks like he needs telling.
‘He looks like he doesn’t take that much information in.
‘Some players are like that, sometimes you tell them once and they’ll do it all the time. He looks like you need to tell him every two minutes, what you want him to do.’
Martial rose above Andreas Christensen to nod home from an Aaron Wan-Bissaka cross, which was undoubtedly his highlight of the match.
Scholes felt that was all the more frustrating as one of the only times he got into the penalty box he produced great quality.
‘If he’s capable of stuff like that, he did it once tonight and he got his goal, so Ole will be after more of that,’
The header in the capital was Martial’s ninth Premier League goal of the season and 13th in all competitions, making him United’s second top-scorer behind Marcus Rashford.
With Rashford out injured with a serious back problem until April, the goal-scoring responsibility is falling more heavily on Martial and he will be expected to surpass his previous best total in the Premier League of 11, which he managed in his first season at Old Trafford in 2015/16.
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