Rashford remains confident with Pogba’s penalties despite costly miss at Wolves

Marcus Rashford has played down Manchester United’s penalty controversy after Paul Pogba’s latest miss.

Rui Patricio saved Pogba’s second-half spot-kick in Monday’s 1-1 draw at Wolves.

The midfielder has now missed four penalties since the start of last season after failing to convert against Burnley, Everton and Southampton.

After the miss Pogba was the subject of racial abuse on Twitter, with United issuing a statement saying they were disgusted and working to identify those responsible.

Rashford has a perfect record from 12 yards having netted in the 4-0 win over Chelsea last week, but he does not blame Pogba for wanting to take the penalty at Molineux.

“I think if you ask anyone in the team, they’ll feel confident to take the penalty. Paul wanted to take it, I took the one last week and it was no problem,” said the 21-year-old.

“But he’s scored countless penalties for us, countless penalties in his career and it’s normal for somebody to miss a penalty.

“We don’t need to make a deal of it; if we had another penalty, I’m sure he’d score.”

Anthony Martial’s 50th United goal opened the scoring only for Ruben Neves to curl in off the bar from outside the box to earn Wolves a draw before Pogba’s penalty miss.

United lost twice to Wolves at Molineux last season – going down 2-1 in the FA Cup and Premier League in a matter of weeks.

Solskjaer’s side were vastly improved from those defeats and after four points from their opening two games, Rashford is satisfied with their development.

“We still have things to work on but it was a decent performance,” Rashford told MUTV. “We were unlucky to come away with a point. It feels like we’ve lost the game.

“I’ve compared it to last time we were here and it’s a million miles off that performance.

“We know that we’ve improved individually and as a team. The result is disheartening but we brush ourselves down and go again.

“We see the improvement, we feel it – but 100 per cent we need to show it. That’s the most important part of it.”

Wolves have drawn their two opening Premier League games of the season and head to Turin to face Torino on Thursday in the first leg of their Europa League play-off.

Victory in the tie would take them into the group stage and captain Conor Coady is relishing the task.

“It is amazing. We wanted to finish seventh to have these nights,” he said.

“We have these games coming up. We are going to Torino and is something we are looking forward to.

“We want to play as many games as possible.”