Manchester City tried to sign Marcus Rashford from Manchester United when Omar Berrada was a key figure at the Etihad Stadium, according to a journalist.

Rashford is now part of the Man Utd first-team squad after spending the 2025/26 campaign on loan at Barcelona.

The England international winger helped Barcelona win LaLiga last season.

However, Barcelona decided against triggering the £26million option to make Rashford’s loan deal with Man Utd permanent in the summer of 2026.

Rashford is under contract at Man Utd until 2028, having signed a new contract worth £325,000 per week with the Red Devils in July 2023.

Man Utd reporter Phil Brown, who has over 123,000 followers on X, has now revealed that Omar Berrada wanted to sign Rashford for Man City before he signed a new deal with the Red Devils.

Berrada was the Chief Football Operations Officer at Man City at the time and is now the CEO at Man Utd.

Omar Berrada wants Marcus Rashford at Man City

Brown wrote on X at 7:39pm on October 19: “Marcus Rashford was given a new contract for one reason only which of course was never disclosed to him.

“He was having a great season during the time the club was put up for sale and the Glazers didn’t want to lose an asset of that value and it affect the sale price, exactly the same thing they did with Mason Greenwood.

“They told Rashford how important he was, what they planned to do with the team and how much the club loved him, meanwhile Omar Berrarda was offering him significantly more to come to City but he decided to stay with his boyhood club.

“Once INEOS came in, they looked at those players transactionally and wanted them out.

“If they had’ve just been honest with players and said ‘we don’t really care about you, we just want to make more money from the sale of this football club and you being under contract helps us do that’ then none of this would have happened.

“Subsequently they could’ve offered to cancel his contract but they didn’t because he can make them money in a sale.

“Undoubtedly Marcus Rashford made his own mistakes which he will readily admit to but when your employer is working hand in glove with individuals who are abusing you and your family then it tends to fracture the relationship a bit.

“I once asked Utd why they did that and the individual said (I kid you not) ‘well people have to work with Fox News’.

Brown was reacting to claims that Rashford is becoming a problem at Man Utd.

The journalist wrote on X at 5:41pm on October 19: “Unsurprisingly, a Utd player who has played a total of 3 minutes in the last couple of games has been singled out in the media by people who have an odd fixation with him.

“It is total nonsense to claim that players have an issue with him internally such as Cunha.

“The individual(s) who wrote this invented b*******t didn’t write that not only is he carrying an injury but he recently had a death in the family.

“This fact would’ve obvious to anyone who is informed on the situation so either the individual(s) that write this nonsense are either completely uninformed or deliberately omitted a key contextual detail which is extremely unethical.

“So which is it?”

Brown also revealed earlier that United’s co-owners INEOS are trying to drive out the club’s higher earners, indicating there may be more than meets the eye with regard to Lisandro Martinez’s recent outburst against club bosses.