Manchester United legend Gary Neville has urged the club to "persist with" Marcus Rashford as their main goal-getter.
Rashford has already made 201 appearances for the Red Devils despite being just 22, scoring 64 goals and creating a further 33.
The main goalscoring burden has fallen on the shoulders of the England international since last summer's departure of Romelu Lukaku, and Neville has defended his scoring rate by comparing him to Cristiano Ronaldo and Alan Shearer at the same stages of their careers.
"Marcus Rashford, to be fair, is still a young player [who's] developing, he needs to be persisted with," Neville told Goal.
"He will be persisted with because Manchester United believe in him, and they should believe in him because he's a great talent. When you're sort of a young player... Alan Shearer didn't score a goal a game at Southampton when he first broke in. Simple as that.
"Cristiano [Ronaldo] didn't do it at Manchester United when he first came to Manchester. We shouldn't be expecting the same of Marcus Rashford."
Rashford's statistics compare favourably to the two players mentioned by Neville, with Shearer having scored 23 times in 118 games for Southampton at the age of 22, while Ronaldo had 35 goals in 129 outings for United.
Barney Corkhill
