There will have been many considerations running through the mind of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer when he resolved at last to send on Marcus Rashford for the final stages of a hitherto goalless FA Cup replay on Wednesday night, and no doubt in the moment the decision will have made sense.

The FA Cup offers Manchester United some salvation this season, and Solskjaer could make the case privately, if not in public, that a win on Tuesday outweighed the importance of a league game away at Liverpool, which most expect United to lose anyway. The next three points in the long struggle to challenge for the Champions League places are likely not coming at Anfield on Sunday – but an FA Cup defeat? That might cast a different kind of shade on the manager.

He knew that Rashford has been nursing a back injury for weeks and was substituted at Norwich City to that end. It was a risk to bring him on against Wolverhampton Wanderers, and so it proved: victory but at a price. If Solskjaer picks Rashford for Anfield he will do so knowing that the risk is even greater this time, with a set of implications that go far beyond the weekend. This is how it is when a manager is buying himself time with every game, when it feels like every moment of every match, every injury, every setback, is dictating to him – rather than the other way around.