Manchester United found themselves under the cosh against Leicester early on, relying on the brilliance of David De Gea to keep the visitors at bay.
The Spain international, who has now equalled Peter Schmeichel’s record of 182 clean sheets for the club, made two excellent saves from Harvey Barnes and Kelechi Iheanacho to prevent Brendan Rodgers’ side from opening the scoring.
However, a goal from Rashford in the 25th minute turned the tide.
The England international then doubled his side’s lead 11 minutes after the restart, bagging his 24th goal across all competitions in the process.
And Sancho made the result safe late on, with the England international striking after some good work from the mercurial Bruno Fernandes.
Speaking after the game, Ten Hag praised Rashford.
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“We were 1-0 up, we knew also how to beat them because there was a lot of space in the midfield and behind their defending line.
“It was a good goal, one again a great pass from Bruno [Fernandes], great goal from Rashy [Marcus Rashford] and then we are 1-0 up.
“The second half was all us and Bruno Fernandes played a magnificent game.
“The team is putting Rashford in the right positions, especially Bruno, he creates how many passes, he gives behind, he crosses in.
“Not only Bruno but I think he is doing a great job.
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“We need all players in form but we have to follow the principles of our way of play and if we do that, we can play very well and we have seen that in the second half.”
Ten Hag did, however, play down talk of his team winning the title.
“We don’t think about that, we think about tomorrow, we have to be a better version of ourselves and that is what we have to work for,” said the 53-year-old.
“We are in February, don’t look far ahead.”
Rashford has now registered his best-ever goalscoring campaign for United after his 24th strike of the season.
And the England star hailed De Gea for his performance, too, saying: “Overall a good day. They created good opportunities and David made a great save at the end of the first half, without that we can’t go on to win the game.
“It’s still early in the season, we’re fighting for a lot of different things and we have another big game in the week to hopefully go through to the next round of the Europa League and then a massive game for us [against Newcastle in the Carabao Cup final].
“I don’t feel like slowing down and always want to improve.”
On whether his side can win the title, he then added: “We’re close but both teams in front of us are good teams and playing good football.
“We have to just focus on ourselves, do as well as we can and keep picking up points.”
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