After last season’s worst-ever Premier League finish, the entire Manchester United squad has a point to prove ahead of the new campaign.

But for two players in particular, the new season represents a significant shot at redemption and a chance to remind the football world of their unique gifts. For Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho, last season was one to forget, a campaign both will no doubt look back on with recrimination and a sense of regret.

Rashford was coming off the back of a career-best 30 goal season, one which earned him a lucrative new long-term contract worth £350,000-a-week. But the 26-year-old imploded in spectacular fashion, managing just eight goals in total, amid off-field transgressions, including a boozy bender in Belfast which saw him fined and dropped by Erik ten Hag.

The most damning indictment of Rashford’s miserable season came with his omission from England’s squad for Euro 2024 and their valiant push to lift the trophy. Last season followed a similar path for Sancho, a run-in with Ten Hag early in the season – when he effectively branded his boss a liar – leading to him being exiled from the squad and forced to train alone.

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Salvation came in the form of a loan move back to former club Borussia Dortmund for the second half of the campaign, with a run to the Champions League final, but it was a season to forget for Sancho, just like Rashford. Against that backdrop, both face huge expectations going into the new season, although there is a scenario whereby neither could be a United player come the end of the transfer window.

Despite Ten Hag having insisted he and Sancho have “drawn a line and we move on” following their public fall-out, United remain willing to sell the 24-year-old winger if they can get around half of the £73m they paid Dortmund for him in 2021.

The same is true of Rashford. For all Ten Hag’s positive rhetoric about the England forward, United are open to selling their poster boy, if a club matches their £60m valuation, although as one club source indicated recently “there simply isn’t a market for Rashford”, given his spectacular fall from grace.

So although United remain open to offers for both, using any revenue from their sales to fund upgrades on both, it seems likely Rashford and Sancho will remain at Old Trafford, although neither can afford a repeat of last season’s shortcomings. Rashford’s pre-season has so far consisted of an underwhelming 45-minute outing in a meek 1-0 defeat away to Norwegian side Rosenborg, the day after England’s agonising Euro 2024 final loss to Spain.

He missed the 2-0 win away to Rangers at the weekend, with an unspecified but supposedly minor injury problem, one that has not prevented him from flying out with the rest of the squad to Los Angeles today for the start of United’s three-game US tour. Sancho was brought back in from the cold by Ten Hag for that win at Murrayfield, and showed flickers of the skill that made United willing to make him the fifth most expensive signing in their history.

Throughout last season, Rashford looked burdened by playing for United, the joy and elan he showed in his early years replaced by a scowl and a sense of dread every time he to the pitch. Arguably, his best performance for United last season – like many of Ten Hag’s under-performing squad – came in their surprise but fully deserved 2-1 win over local rivals Manchester City in the FA Cup final.

Rashdord played like his younger self in that sun-drenched Wembley win, with a sense of freedom, purpose and a swagger, playing a key role in United’s winner, with a sublime cross field ball in the build-up to it. Sancho, too, found form towards the end of last season, in Dortmund’s path to the Champions League final, which came to an inglorious end against 15-time winners Real Madrid.

The challenge for Ten Hag now is to harness the form Rashford and Sancho showed at the end of last season, and use it to motivate both to get back to their best in pre-season and take that new-found confidence into the new campaign.