Marcus Rashford facing eye-watering £15m bill as plan to build dream home becomes nightmare for Barcelona star

Five years into that project and the grand mansion that Rashford had planned is nowhere near completion. The 27-year-old is, according to The Sun “investigating” why the former golf course and clubhouse looks nothing like what it should by this stage. It is claimed that work ground to a halt at one point “amid a rumoured dispute over money”.

Rashford is said to have “instructed his finance team to find out what has gone wrong” and discover when the build could be completed if no more issues are encountered. The England international wanted to make the former nine-hole golf course his “forever home”, but is going to have to dig deep in order to make that possible.

A source told The Sun: “Marcus has spent millions on it already but faces spending millions more. There was a dispute in the summer. Work has recently started again but there’s slow progress. It’s all about the money. Marcus fears the house isn’t ever going to be worth anywhere near what he’s put into it. But he’s between a rock and a hard place as he can’t just stop and leave it. He just wants to get it finished.”

Lavish plans were supposed to include five bedrooms, an indoor swimming pool, personal gym and chill-out area. There would also be a separate apartment in the grounds, landscaped gardens and welfare areas for local wildlife. The project has, however, been hit by floods and rising costs, leading to the original blueprints being changed.

Neighbours are just as frustrated as Rashford is, with one telling The Sun of being visited by a man “acting on behalf of Rashford and his family”: “He said he deals with land disputes. There’s a dispute about how much money they’ve paid out. He was asking us questions about the contractors. I told him what I knew and what I’d seen. He told me how much they had spent — it’s in the millions.”

The neighbour added: “His house is right where it’s boggy. We have a cellar and up until 2014 it was dry as a bone but now we have a pump to keep the water out because the water table is so high. So you can imagine next door going two floors down. It’s non-stop pumping out.

“The amount of heavy machines on there has been unbelievable. But there’s no sign of a finished article. No one knows what’s going to happen to it. There are all sorts of rumours but I’ve never even seen Rashford here. The costs involved are staggering, even for someone on £350,000 a week.

“We never objected to the planning. We did complain to the site manager once because you get lots of weeds. Then when the weeds seed they blow towards us. One particular weed is poisonous to our horses - ragwort.”

It is being claimed that merely managing the land will cost Rashford £1m a year. A spokesperson for the Barcelona loanee has denied that the project faces any issues, with Ben Smith - the MD of Noble Projects, the company building the house - telling The Sun: “We have a long record of undertaking multiple successful, prestige projects for a diverse range of clients. We are a highly professional business and we always respect the confidentiality of our clients. As such, we do not discuss publicly the details of any projects. We can advise that we have no concerns over the quality of our work or other such matters on any of our sites. We are proud to deliver exceptional work levels and we continue to do so.”

Rashford is unable to oversee events as much as he would like after leaving boyhood club United in the summer for a spell at La Liga giants Barcelona - with his loan agreement in Catalonia including the option for a permanent transfer to be completed in 2026.