Featuring Erling Haaland, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal, here are 15 ridiculous Premier League records that will never be broken.

We are ignoring Derby County’s unwanted record low for wins (1) and points (11) because Southampton are that bad.

Fewest goals conceded in a season (15)
Jose Mourinho joined Chelsea in 2004, declaring himself “a special one” in his first press conference, with ‘The Special One’ of course becoming his world-famous nickname. With that kind of billing he had to make things tick instantly, and he did just that.

After defying the odds to guide FC Porto to Champions League glory, Mourinho moved to Stamford Bridge looking to dethrone Arsenal, who had just become the first team in Premier League history to go the entire season without a defeat. More on that soon.

In the Portuguese manager’s first season he did in fact dethrone the Invincibles, and only lost one match in the process – away to Manchester City before they were good.

The most astonishing thing in Chelsea’s title success was their defensive record. They conceded 15 league goals in 38 games with Petr Cech in goal, John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho at centre-half and Paulo Ferreira and William Gallas as full-backs, keeping a record 25 clean sheets in the process.

No team will do this again. There is just no chance. We have seen some brilliant defensive partnerships and goalkeepers in the intervening years, and not one has come close to this record from 2004/05.

Fewest appearances to reach 50 Premier League goals (48)
It took Andrew Cole 65 games to reach the 50-goal mark in the Premier League and Erling Haaland casually reached that mark in a mere 48 games. And that 50th goal was the opener against Liverpool so shush with your flat-track bully claims.

If anyone does somehow break this record, it will probably be Haaland’s future child.

Most consecutive seasons as manager (22)
From 1996 until 2018, Arsene Wenger was manager of Arsenal, meaning he was in charge for a colossal 22 seasons before being hounded out of the club by a divided fanbase.

It is worth noting that Sir Alex Ferguson was Manchester United boss for nearly 27 years, but he took charge in 1986, six years before the maiden Premier League season.

Such is the nature of football these days, it is very hard to imagine a manager lasting as long in a job as Wenger. Claudio Ranieri did the impossible with Leicester City by guiding them to their first Premier League title, only to get sacked less than a year later. Jurgen Klopp was a possibility but he ran out of energy, while Pep Guardiola is close to having nothing left in him.

Arsenal sticking by Mikel Arteta in 2020 does indicate that he is unsackable, meaning fans might be forced to #TrustTheProcess in 2043 when he eclipses Wenger’s record.

Most consecutive games played (310)
Goalkeeper Brad Friedel played an astonishing 310 games in a row in the Premier League. The record for an outfield player is Frank Lampard with 164. While that is a very impressive return, Lamps never came close to toppling the American.

Friedel broke this record playing for Blackburn Rovers, Aston Villa and Tottenham. He joined Spurs in 2011 where he was able to continue his streak. Andre Villas-Boas ended the record in October 2012 when he gave Hugo Lloris his first league start. Friedel started the next game. How frustrating.

Fewest games for a player to score three hat-tricks (8)
Haaland’s treble in his first Manchester derby was his third in his debut season, in only his eighth Premier League appearance.

Before that match, the fastest player to reach three hat-tricks was Michael Owen, who took 48 games. Forty-eight. FFS.

Most points without finishing first (97)
Honestly, how unfortunate do you have to be to accumulate 97 points across a 38-game campaign, yet finish second? That is astounding. Non-Liverpool fans do find this bloody hilarious, though.

97 points would have won the league in every other season, bar the year prior when Manchester City finished with 100 points, which is obviously another record that probably won’t be broken.

These two clubs pushed each other to limits that we have never witnessed before (it’s still not the best rivalry in Premier League history) and in 2018/19 when Liverpool had 97 points, they only lost once and finished a single point behind City.

Longest unbeaten run at home (86)
Mourinho is back. He took charge of 60 matches in Chelsea’s remarkable 86-match unbeaten run at Stamford Bridge in the Premier League, with Felipe Scolari, Claudio Ranieri and Avram Grant overseeing the other 26.

“There are some records that you look at and feel that it is impossible for somebody to do it. Our record from Chelsea is still the record and it is very difficult for somebody to do better than that,” Mourinho said of the record.

Liverpool gave it a good go in their quest to at least equal the record Chelsea set between March 2004 and October 2008, going 68 matches unbeaten at Anfield under Jurgen Klopp. They probably would have continued if they were not forced to play behind closed doors due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That run felt like it went on forever and Manchester City are third with 37, so we can all appreciate how impressive the Blues’ run was.

Longest run without conceding a goal (1,113 minutes)
In 2008/09, Manchester United goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar kept 14 clean sheets in a row between November 15 and February 18, totalling over 1,100 minutes.

United won the title with 90 points, conceding an impressive 24 goals in the process. It’s not quite 04/05 Chelsea, but impressive nonetheless.

The man to end Van der Sar’s run? Why Blackburn’s Roque Santa Cruz, of course. The Red Devils then didn’t keep a league clean sheet for over two months. Pathetic.

Most seasons scored in (21)
Sticking with Manchester United, Ryan Giggs scored in 21 consecutive seasons. Even playing in 21 seasons seems ludicrous now.

Giggs actually scored in 23 seasons in a row, but two came prior to the first Premier League campaign.

Most consecutive games scoring against the same team (9)
No, it is not Luis Suarez against Norwich City, but this record was set by another Liverpool player.

Norwich hated coming up against the tricky Uruguayan, but so did Crystal Palace when it came to Sadio Mane.

The Senegalese forward scored in all nine of his Reds appearances against the Eagles. He could have made it ten out of ten but he was busy winning the African Cup of Nations with his country. He probably didn’t mind too much about missing that game. Palace still lost 3-1 even without their nemesis lining up against them.

Most defeats in a row (20)
Derby were bad but at least they broke up their losing runs with a draw here and there.

The unfortunate club to hold this particular record is Sunderland, who lost 20 top-flight matches on the bounce.

To kick off the 2005/06 campaign, the Black Cats lost five in a row before a 1-1 draw against West Brom kicked off a three-game unbeaten run. Good going, guys!

It was in 2003 that the run began. Their final victory of 2002/03 came against Liverpool in December that campaign, losing 18 – including their last 15 – and drawing two of their last 20 matches to see them relegated with 19 points. If it wasn’t for Kevin Phillips, they could have finished on single-digit points and we wouldn’t always be ripping the p*ss out of Derby.

Fewest points as champions (75)
Liverpool fans will be furious reading this. They finished second in 2018/19 with 22 more points than title winners Manchester United in 1997.

When looking at champions with the fewest points, the top three all happened in the ’90s and it is safe to say the game has changed since then.

While many say it is the most competitive league in the world and in no way a ‘farmers league’, City have won six of the last seven titles, finishing on 100, 98, 86, 93, 89 and 90 points. And their tally of 86 probably would have been higher if Liverpool weren’t completely rubbish that season.

United lost their crown the following season to Arsenal, whose 78-point haul is the second-lowest in history, sandwiched between two Red Devils triumphs.

This team under Sir Alex Ferguson included some famous names such as Roy Keane, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Eric Cantona, Peter Schmeichel and Andy Cole. Despite only winning the league with 75 points, what a side that was.

Lowest (non-Covid) attendance (3,039)
Even with rising ticket prices, this will obviously not be broken. On January 26, 1993, Everton faced Wimbledon at Selhurst Park in front of a little over 3,000 people.

It was a cold Tuesday night and Everton accounted for 1,500 of the supporters in the ground. In fairness to Wimbledon, they weren’t playing at their home stadium and folk were still waiting on the first payday after Christmas.

No losses in a season
The Invincibles went through an entire season unbeaten and Arsenal fans have been clinging onto this one for a while. Is yours gold? Didn’t think so.

What a side this was. It was full of technical brilliance, grit, fight, ruthlessness and had Thierry Henry. Enough said.

This particular record obviously cannot be broken but it can be equalled. It won’t be though.

Most goals in a half (5)
Jermain Defoe showed no remorse when Tottenham hosted Wigan in 2009, scoring five in a 9-1 shellacking. “I just felt unstoppable. I just had the feeling something special was going to happen,” the striker later recalled. Poor Chris Kirkland. And Peter Crouch, who couldn’t get a sniff after his goal put Spurs ahead.

Two players – Andy Cole and Alan Shearer – had scored five goals in a Premier League game before, and another pair – Dimitar Berbatov and Sergio Aguero – have done so since. That feat in itself is so rare that accomplishing it within 45 minutes does not bear thinking about.

There has been no double hat-tricks in the Premier League and Chelsea’s Cole Palmer recently came close to equalling Defoe’s feat with four in the first half of a win over Brighton, which was the first time a player has scored four goals in the first half of a Premier League match. It’ll take quite something to beat that one as well.

👉 More: Premier League player stats | Premier League tables | Premier League five-year net spend

Records are there to be broken and in this instance, we can see that being the case with these seven in the Premier League.

There are seven records we can see being broken below and another 15 we can’t see being bettered here.

Most goals scored (260)
A once unbreakable record, Erling Haaland will smash this one to pieces. Constant transfer speculation made us think – and Alan Shearer hope – that Haaland might not become the Premier League’s all-time scorer, but it will take a miracle after he signed a new 10-year contract.

Shearer’s incredible record as the all-time top scorer in the Premier League could have been even more impressive if he didn’t suffer so many injuries, or if his career did not begin before the competition’s inception.

But Kane will be the first man to surpass Shearer. He scored an outrageous 213 goals in 320 matches before he joined for Bayern Munich but we fully expect him to return for the final three/four seasons of his career to break the record.

Most home wins in a season (18)
This does mean a team would have to win all of their home games… which is not too far-fetched.

Four different clubs hold this record: Chelsea 2005/06, whose dropped points came against Charlton Athletic (1-1); Manchester United 2010/11 (2-2 vs West Brom); Manchester City 2011/12 (3-3 vs Sunderland) and 2018/19 (2-3 vs Crystal Palace); and Liverpool 2019/20 (1-1 vs Burnley).

The team you would expect to win 19 out of 19 is Manchester City but they have been surprisingly rubbish this season. But Rodri will be back for 2025/26 and they will probably hit 100 points again.

Oldest player (43 years 162 days)
John Burridge represented seven different teams in 1994 and 1996 alone, making it 16 in total between 1994 and 1997, which was the year he retired.

Most recently a goalkeeping consultant for Kerala Blasters in India (thanks Wikipedia), Burridge played more games for Blackpool than any other side and in May 1995 he became the oldest player to play in the Premier League at 43 years and 162 days old. He was in the sticks for Manchester City against Queens Park Rangers and his side lost 3-2.

How fit players are these days says this record will be broken. Gigi Buffon will probably come out of retirement to sign for Manchester City on £0 a week so he can finally get his hands on the Champions League trophy.

The oldest outfielder in Premier League history is Teddy Sheringham, who played his last game at the ripe age of 40. Sheringham also became the oldest player to score in the top flight when he netted for West Ham against Portsmouth on Boxing Day 2006, a record that still stands.

Most consecutive seasons scoring at least 30 goals (3)
Here’s another record Alan Shearer is bound to surrender, with Haaland on the prowl.

In each of the three campaigns between 1993 and 1996, Shearer scored at least 30 league goals.

Haaland is sure to break this record. Going forward, 20 games per season should be enough for the Nordic robot to hit 30 goals, so little injuries and knocks shouldn’t make too much of a difference.

Most goals in a calendar month (10)
Luis Suarez’s 13/14 campaign was pretty good. The best individual season in Premier League history, in fact.

In that season, the Uruguayan scored ten goals in December alone, netting 31 in total despite missing the first five games through suspension. He also assisted 17 goals that year.

Haaland is coming for this one too. When will he break this record? Nobody knows. How many times will he break this record? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Most direct free-kicks scored (18)
David Beckham was a brilliant footballer and will forever be remembered for his outstanding free-kicks.

In 265 Premier League appearances, Becks scored 18 direct free-kicks. This is the most anyone has scored in the competition and is a record that has stood since he scored his last versus Everton in 2003.

James Ward-Prowse is going to break Beckham’s record, having scored 17 direct free-kicks, but we have no idea when. He has not scored one since leaving Southampton and is currently warming the bench for Nottingham Forest. We still have plenty of faith.

Most Player of the Month awards (7)
The last of the lot here is held by Harry Kane and Sergio Aguero – who have both been named Premier League Player of the Month seven times. But Mo Salah is hovering on six and and there’s a whole raft of players on four and five. Haaland? He has three and will likely finish his career with over 10.

👉 More: Premier League player stats | Premier League tables | Premier League five-year net spend

If you’ve followed football for any length of time you will have said or at the very least heard the following ominous words: “It could only happen to us.”

No good can come of hearing or using that phrase. It means something bad has happened, or is about to. Something that no other fans could understand, something they have never suffered.

And yet we’ve all been there. How does that work? Mad.

So here we have 14 assorted footballing grievances, disasters, misadventures and unfairnesses, all of which only ever happen to your club and never to anyone else.

Feel free to add your own further examples in the comments and remember: if you feel personally attacked by any of these, you’re only proving our point. Ha! Checkmate! Could only happen to you, couldn’t it?

Managers who wait to long to make changes
We have never, ever, ever heard a football fan complain that their manager makes substitutions too early. They might complain about the specific substitution that is being made, sure, but not the indecent haste of it.

We are impatient creatures – and by that we mean humans in general, not even just football fans – and we crave something to grab our attention. Football fans do not want a manager who’ll give it another 10 minutes to see what happens, they want changes NOW, dammit. Bring me my game-changing triple substitution in the 42nd minute, you incompetent dilly-dallying fool.

Every other club can do it; admittedly we can’t think of specific examples right now, but that’s not important. What’s important is why can’t YOU do it? Right now? This is so frustrating.

Corners that don’t clear the first man
Everyone else takes good corners, don’t they? Fizzed into the box with pace and accuracy. You concede loads of goals from them, don’t you? That’s right. But you don’t score from them. By your guesstimate, your team hasn’t scored a single goal from a corner since 2016. Unless you’re Arsenal.

And the reason is clear. That massive overpaid f*ckwit you’ve got taking them never clears the first man. Paid all that money, can’t kick a football over a bloke from 20 yards. Ridiculous.

Of course, deep down, you know why corners sometimes hit the first man. It’s for the same reason professional tennis players sometimes hit a first serve into the net. They’re not just trying to clear the man/net; they’re trying to just clear them in such a way that creates the greatest chance of eventual success. But f*ck that noise. Just kick it over his head! I could kick it over his head! Give me 150 grand a week!

Your former players scoring against you
You look at the teamsheet. Uh-oh. Who’s that on the bench for today’s opposition? The player you let go on a free at 21 after he’d played 17 first-team games without scoring a goal. We all know what happens next here, don’t we? It could – and absolutely definitely will – only happen to you.

Rubbish players scoring against you
And not just those who were once on your books. Is there any more terrifying sentence to hear about an opposition striker than the words ‘without a goal in his last 12 games’? What happens next is as inevitable as Thanos. It’s really only a question of when rather than if they complete their hat-trick: before half-time or just after?

Why does no other club have to put up with this sh*t?

Biased refs
Obviously. You see his name and you just know the day is ruined. This ref hates you, always has, often because he is from a different part of the country and thus likes the teams over there or he is from the same part of the country and thus hates you because he likes your local rivals. So unfair, and so unique to you. A miracle you have managed to survive at all, frankly, with these weekly miscarriages of justice that quite literally nobody else ever has to deal with.

READ: Neville blames Arteta for Michael Oliver abuse as Arsenal ‘corruption’ narrative ‘inflamed for 12 months’

The media agenda
This is the big one really. We’ve got a whole bunch of specific sub-categories coming up that fall under the umbrella of the very obvious and very real Media Agenda against your club.

Here, The Media (or ‘Mainstream Media’ and ‘MSM’ if you’ve turned your tinfoil FA Cup into a particularly fetching hat) is always to be regarded as one homogenous blob that acts as one at all times, and always against the interests of your club or in favour of another.

In its broadest terms here before we get into the specifics below, this falls into two categories: too much attention on things you’ve done badly and not enough attention on things you’ve done well.

If one of your players scores a particularly pleasing goal, for instance, it simply won’t do to just enjoy that goal for its loveliness. You must note how had that goal been scored by a different player at a different club – favourite examples here include Lionel Messi and Kevin De Bruyne but it can be anyone, really – we would all have heard a lot more about it for a much longer period of time from those MSM shills.

Injury crises
And specifically, injury crises that are ignored by The Media (see above) while other, obviously far lesser injury crises at other club are being discussed at great length and used to explain away results for which your club would be pilloried. Other clubs simply don’t have the same injury crisis that you do, it is a wonder you have even managed to put a team out this season.

Two seemingly counter-intuitive things are vitally true here.

First your club obviously has the most incompetent medical department around. Only at your club are players initially ruled out for a fortnight and then not seen or heard from until six months later.

But second, at no point must the existence of an injury crisis in the first place be considered anything more than rotten bad luck. There cannot be meaningful time wasted on whether something your club might be doing has had any impact on all these misfortunes.

And, of course, the flip side of this is also true. Any team that is doing well and not suffering injuries is simply being very lucky and their success can thus be ignored and/or dismissed as a fluke.

Being last on MOTD
Admittedly, feels like this used to be a much bigger thing a few years ago. We remember spreadsheets being produced and lots of numbers being thrown around and now we think about it did it maybe involve Stoke quite a lot? Is this one actually about one club? Was it actually a Stoke thing that was a legitimate complaint? Was it even Stoke? Could have been Burnley, now we think about it. Dyche’s Burnley, that is. Not Kompany’s, obviously.

Anyway, if this one isn’t as much of a thing any more, how about a more 2025 version: never getting an extended analysis segment from Carragher and friends on Monday Night Football?

Unfair pundit and co-commentator representation
Which leads nicely into this one. How come every game you play on the telly always has a co-commentator who played for the opposition? Happens every single time, doesn’t it? Specifically to you and not any other club.

And those three pundits in the studio? Two from the other team and only one from yours, isn’t there? Plus he only played for you for two years anyway and was mainly sh*t.

READ: Man Utd fan Rio Ferdinand continues to infuriate but a new star emerges – the football week on TV

Mediocre goalkeepers turning into Lev Yashin for 90 minutes against you
That’s enough media-based stuff for now. Let’s get back into what might be our absolute favourite. It’s a variation on the former player scoring against us trope and the rubbish striker scoring against us trope, but might actually be the best of the lot.

It strikes more purely than those at something that sits at the very core of football fandom: that your team is getting screwed over not just by referees, and the media, and your own manager, but by the most capricious beast of all: stupid dumb bastard fate.

The sheer mix of the potency of the rage and impotency of the situation makes the ‘not winning a game you’ve dominated’ one of the purest forms of football irritation out there. The more absurd the stats, the more weirdly fun it all is.

But you know who never fails to win games they dominate? Other teams. They always find a way, don’t they? But no, when it’s you the third-choice goalkeeper for a team eight points adrift of safety makes 13 saves in a 0-0 draw, doesn’t he?

And that’s if you’re lucky. Because literally the only other possible outcome is that other bunch of pricks scoring from their only shot on target in the whole game, and it was probably about 35 yards out as well.

Everyone else is so lucky this never happens to them, you think to yourself. All of you. We like to think that everyone reading this is now dredging up a name they haven’t heard in a long time from the memory bank with which to torture themselves. Ours is Boaz Myhill, if you’re interested.

PSR double standards
This is a new one, and instantly very much one of our favourites. A lot of the categories here could be filed under ‘double standards’, the illogical and incoherent but deeply held suspicion that the world is against your club for some reason, or favouring another.

It’s easier than just accepting you might just be a bit shit or even in fact be the skull-badged baddies, isn’t it?

But what we like specifically about the PSR version of “When it was us, this happened, but now it’s them, something different has happened” is how much of it by definition from people who are absolutely definitely on top of their brief when it comes to arcane legal knowledge and reading between the lines of complex financial results.

Assorted fixture-computer machinations
Your team has never had a home game on the first day of the season. Or the last day of the season. Your team has the hardest run of fixtures at the worst possible time.

And, again, the flipside. Your most hated rival? Always at home on the first day of the season. And the last. And on Boxing Day. And always about to embark on a really nice-looking run of five winnable games.

Sometimes it honestly feels like you have 27 away games a season and 14 of them are at Anfield. And then there’s Newcastle, isn’t there? Who’ve famously never once played a Premier League game that wasn’t at St James’ Park. Go on, try and think of a Newcastle game that wasn’t at St James’ Park. That’s right, you can’t do it.

Difficult cup draws
On the same lines here, aren’t we. Who have you got? Man City away, again, for the fifth year in a row. Who has that team you hate got? A non-league team at home. It happens in every single draw. Even the Carabao ones, and there aren’t even non-league teams here.

Bonus points for dark mutterings about ‘warm balls’ and jokes about conspiracy theories you secretly believe where the police are now also involved in f***ing your team over specifically by trying to avoid certain unwanted clashes.

Drawn-out transfer sagas
This one’s interesting, we think. Because we reckon this one speaks of a wider point about how we all consume football now in the internet age. Essentially, it is now entirely possible and really quite strikingly easy for fans of any football club to spend every waking moment of their life consuming content about the latest goings-on at their football club without ever a) running out of things to read/watch/listen or b) having to read/watch/listen to anything about any other club, or crucially c) having to go to any site or podcast or whatever that isn’t solely focused on your club.

In that kind of environment, is it really any wonder at all that we all think our rivals are always just plucking new signings out of thin air while our stupid club drags its heels and negotiates for weeks and months before the transfer falls through at the last minute? You know who doesn’t have transfers fall through at the last minute? That’s right, all the other clubs.

READ: Watkins 4th), Tel 2nd): Ranking the Arsenal striker targets from worst to best buy

With Marcus Rashford running out of time to secure a transfer, we have ranked the Manchester United star’s six end-of-window outcomes on likelihood…

Unsurprisingly, Rashford‘s exit from Man Utd has turned ugly as head coach Ruben Amorim is ‘no longer on speaking terms’ with the outcast, who has made his bed with his alleged half-hearted training efforts.

Instead of moving in the right direction, Man Utd‘s off-field operation has arguably gone backwards since INEOS took over; there has been plenty of talk but not much action as their unwanted stars cling onto their undeserved pricey pay cheques.

Antony is out of the door, but the failure to offload Rashford and Co. has forced a stuttering start to the rebuild under Amorim as they desperately need to raise funds.

In Rashford’s case, Amorim’s insistence on slating the forward is not helpful as increasingly desperate club chiefs look to attract bidders, though his huge salary and dire performances since the 2022/23 campaign are enough to put off interested parties.

Rashford has f***ed it and the chances of the England international remaining at Man Utd beyond Monday night’s transfer deadline are growing, but there are still a couple of clubs in the frame to spare his blushes.

With that, we have ranked the six most likely (based on betting odds) clubs he could play for beyond February 3 based on likelihood…

6) AC Milan
The Serie A giants were earmarked as the early favourites to land Rashford. This move would have made plenty of sense given the current crop of English talent already contracted to AC Milan and senior advisor Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s admiration of his former team-mate.

But this move is currently off the table. A Serie A rule prevents AC Milan from signing more than one non-EU player this month and they opted to prioritise Manchester City veteran Kyle Walker, who has joined the Italian side on loan with an option to buy.

Walker stole Rashford’s thunder by making a bombshell exit and it’s pretty damning that the Serie A side picked the past-it defender over the forward. The two Englishmen could reunite in Milan this summer, but this move won’t happen before next week’s deadline.

READ: Rashford, Grealish, Nunez among eight PL stars forced to wait for summer transfer amid January links

5) Arsenal
Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham are the two Premier League sides most commonly mentioned as destinations for the wantaway forward, but Arsenal are ahead of their two rivals in the betting.

This once-great site has called for the Gunners to sign Rashford as they are crying out for a new attacker with Bukayo Saka’s inferior team-mates exposed without the England international.

Arsenal’s main problem is they are seriously lacking in attacking areas; Rashford would provide much-needed competition for Gabriel Martinelli on the left and another striker option.

The Gunners are reportedly in the market for a wide man, but this pursuit could be delayed until the summer as they target Nico Williams. For now, their priority is to sign a natural No.9 to compete with Kai Havertz and this (plus Rashford’s aforementioned issues) is perhaps why Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins – not the Man Utd star – appears one of their leading options.

MORE MARCUS RASHFORD COVERAGE ON F365…
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👉 Amorim ruins genius Rashford transfer plan before ‘risking wrath’ of Manchester United players with decision

4) Napoli
Rashford has underperformed in the Premier League for some time, but you would still fancy him to smash it in Serie A with his explosive power and pace.

Napoli are another option for Rashford as he could be an alternative for Alejandro Garnacho as Antonio Conte looks to replace Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who is this month’s most expensive player. Dortmund’s Karim Adeyemi has also been linked with Napoli, who need to go back to the drawing board after he decided to stick with the Bundesliga side.

But Rashford faces more disappointment here as he’s only been loosely linked with Napoli, who appear to prefer Garnacho. A potential swap deal with the second-best striker available for a transfer could open the door. 

3) FC Barcelona
Rashford clearly thinks a lot of himself as it’s been widely reported that his ‘dream’ transfer is a move to Barcelona, even though his recent form barely justifies a move to Tottenham, never mind the La Liga giants.

It’s easy to see why Rashford would want to join Barcelona. Despite all of their issues (and there are plenty), they remain one of the premier destinations for footballers.

But it’s hard to make a case for Barcelona needing Rashford, especially given the financial toil they would have to go through to seal a deal with Man Utd.

The 27-year-old could theoretically get his desired move in a couple of years, but this would only come after a rehabilitation process at a B-level European side or Man Utd.

READ: Rashford tops ten Premier League outcasts who have seven days to escape

2) Borussia Dortmund
With Barcelona no more than a pipedream for Rashford at this stage, a move to Dortmund would be a wise play for the winger if getting back to his best is truly his priority over a glamour transfer.

I doubt that’s the case, but Rashford would prove plenty of his critics wrong if he followed Jadon Sancho’s footsteps and rediscovered his love for the game in the Bundesliga.

Dortmund have reportedly lodged the ‘best’ offer for Rashford and have consistently lingered in the transfer frame, so they are perhaps better-placed than rivals to salvage a late deal if anyone can.

1) Manchester United
What a mess Rashford and Man Utd have created for themselves…

Rashford’s unwarranted list of transfer demands and Amorim’s refusal to use him (and his brutal digs) sets up a tense final few months of the season for the forward, who could be ‘banished’ like Sancho. 

He could have made his January exit/reintegration much more seamless by giving an extra few per cent in training to appease Amorim, but his poor conduct mean he’s facing a few months in the wilderness before his summer transfer options are even more limited.