But he's still a winger mate, so Rooney playing won't mean he's out of position. If Henrikh (need to learn of to spell his name) drifts in Valencia will bomb on on the outside of him. He doesn't need to be hugging the touch line like Kanchelskis or anything.
He's not a winger in the traditional sense but he can play there in the right system. It remains to be seen if we play a system that can use Mkhi's full potential as a RW but seeing as José's seemingly put a lot of effort into scouting since his sacking we'll just have to have faith in his choices.
Oh, and I'm not saying he needs to hug the touchline but he likes to be the playmaker; same as Rooney and Zlatan. If we have all 3 in the team they'll all want to do the same thing and it's better to have some variety in attack. It's why I think having Rashford in for one of them would compliment our attack more.
We'll see maybe Jose can get him somewhere near his best form again, if not we won't need to worry about him messing up attacks as he'll be on the bench.
I think those days are long gone sadly. If not, then great, but it's been so long since I've seen him consistantly play well bar, as I keep saying, his spell as an #8 last year. Even if he does play well, having him as a #10 always looking to be the playmaker, Zlatan as our forward always dropping deep to be our playmaker, and Mkhi cutting inside to be our playmaker is just overboard.
In the game against Everton just gone we seemed so congested in the middle with little width and not much movement. When we did have a runner in behind and have a player out wide it was good, but it was rare as it seemed like everyone wanted to be the one in the middle playmaking. Rooney and Zlatan especially love this.
According to Rene, Kagawa was bought with a view to playing him behind Rooney with Wayne going back up top, it's the same reason we wanted Sneijder the year before. Kagawa was the victim of Van Persies arrival not Rooney. Mata is a great player i think, much better than he's shown under Van Gaal but again he probably shouldn't have been bought as we already had Rooney, Kagawa, Fellaini etc.
I agree with all that. I wasn't so much blaming Rooney himself, more so blaming our previous managers for not giving Kagawa a consistant run of games as our 10 to build on soild showings whereas Rooney got unlimited chances despite his performances there; good or bad.
I sound like I'm saying Kagawa was great there for us whenever he got the chance, but I'm not; far from it. It's just that when he did occasionally play well there he didn't often get the opportunity to really cement his place there.
In Van Gaal's first season Rooney played a lot of it in midfield in those crazy formations Louis was experimenting with, so again Rooney wasn't really playing at the expense of Mata. And then towards the end of the season he went up front as a 9 if i remember correctly.
True. Although, I reckon Rooney's still played as a #10 more than Mata since his arrival, but again, that's on the managers not Rooney himself.
Thanks for proving my point about the usual suspects. Bloody hell. I was only commenting on the fact that he looked sharp today ffs. I wasn't saying this is a sign he will be a world beater this season or anything like that. In fact, I generally criticize him more than I praise him.
