Rooney is not in a different position – he is on a different
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Wayne Rooney and Cesc Fàbregas are in the scoring form of their lives for Manchester United and Arsenal. Photograph: Jason Cairnduff/Action Images
It is usually once in a generation that a player comes along capable of hoisting a team on to his shoulders and carrying them towards the light.
Diego Maradona elevated Napoli in 1987, delivering Serie A as if it was a personally wrapped gift. Nearly two decades later Eric Cantona was the catalyst for Manchester United's 1996 Double. It is said that a player is only as good as the team-mates around him. But occasionally, a player is simply so good he makes everybody around him look better.
A showdown in north London this afternoon brings together two players who are having that kind of effect. Chelsea are entitled to wonder whether the Premier League trophy would already be half way to the engravers were it not for the mesmerising feats of Wayne Rooney and Cesc Fábregas.
They make their team's heart beat, taking on as much responsibility as they can physically absorb. They are in the scoring form of their lives. They evidently see the game unfold quicker than anyone else on the pitch ("like having people in your head," as Rooney brilliantly put it). And they are still so very young to be so very important.
Rooney is 24, Fábregas just 22. Both Maradona and Cantona were in their late 20s when they had their most influential club campaigns. Perhaps the most notable feature of their progress this season is the way they have become powerful leaders. That was not exactly on the cards.
Rewind to last summer, and there were questions about whether Rooney was able to fill a significant portion of the gap left by Cristiano Ronaldo, and how he would handle being the main man up front. Fabio Capello was not the only one to note that the Manchester United front man needed to exercise his considerable stamina in an area closer to the penalty area.
Now, it is worth noting that Rooney's goals per game ratio (an exceptional 19 from 22 in the league) is identical to Ronaldo's at the same stage of his World Player of the Year season in 2007-08. Over at the Emirates there were mutterings about whether Fábregas was the right type of captain. Initially he seldom showed anything on the pitch other than his normal game. There was no extra cajoling or organising, no notable shakes of the fist or words in the ear.
The other debate concerned the absence of an obvious partner to bring out the best in him. But this season's tweaked formation, with Alex Song excelling as the anchor and neat ball players positioned around him, Fábregas is in his element. The captain's voice, as well as his game, has rocketed. A total of 11 goals and 11 assists from 18 league starts is a staggering return from midfield.
Among the top leagues in Europe, Fábregas and Rooney lead the way in "goal involvement" (a combination of goals and assists) along with Barcelona's Lionel Messi. It is the sheer force of personality and desire, as well as technique, that makes them the best in their position.
Wenger remembers when he first felt the force of Rooney. For days afterwards he could not get this player out of his head. He was excited – even though the boy had damaged Arsenal with a thunderbolt in the last minute of a game at Goodison Park. "He caught my eye because he scored that goal," Wenger recalls. "He caught the eye of David Seaman."
And how. The Frenchman loved his carefree approach to football, the way he just pulled on his shirt, did not bother about warming up, and went out to pull the opposition to pieces.
Similarly, Sir Alex Ferguson was always aware that Fábregas had distinctive gifts. "Fábregas seems to give Arsenal confidence, I think he is their talisman," Ferguson observes. "He's definitely their main player. We were aware of him when he was still in Spain, we signed Gerard Piqué from Barcelona at the same time, but Arsenal managed to get in first with Fábregas.
"He's been there five years now and he's been important to them in that time, because he has been a constant in a period of change. It's not easy for a team to lose players of the quality of Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and Patrick Vieira, and that's a situation that needs managing. So having someone as consistent as Fábregas has helped. When good players go it usually takes time to get the show back on the road.
"He and Rooney are two of the best players in the Premier League and they are both in a run of form. The consistency Arsenal have shown in climbing to the top of the table recently is probably down to Fábregas being back from injury and playing well."
For real football lovers, such as Ferguson and Wenger, the quality of out-of-the-ordinary players enables them to overlook the less savoury aspects.
Wenger's regard for Rooney is high despite the harm the player has caused his team over the years. Ferguson admires Fábregas despite the fact the Spaniard's name has often been linked to the so called "battle of the buffet", when pizza was thrown at Ferguson's suit.
That maelstrom followed a feisty game in 2004, when Rooney showed his precociousness by winning a disputed penalty and clinching a vital game with a late strike on his 19th birthday. A 17-year-old Fábregas sat on the bench, an unused substitute, and seethed at the sight of one of his team-mates and compatriots, José Antonio Reyes, being hustled out of the game with more brute strength than he felt was justifiable. Rooney, a regular scourge of Arsenal over the years, certainly has more happy memories of this fixture than Fábregas, whose best moment probably amounts to a key role in providing Emmanuel Adebayor with a matchwinner at Old Trafford in 2006.
Fábregas will doubtless feel it is about time for him to make a bigger imprint on this weighty opponent. But even then, can he trust his vulnerable defence to restrain Rooney? Even the likes of Maradona and Cantona would be advised to watch with interest.
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Not only is Wayne Rooney Manchester United's main man, he is equipped to be England's main man. Photograph: Tom Jenkins
Rampant Rooney is not just the appealingly alliterative newspaper phrase of the moment, it happens to be a wholly fair and accurate description of a singular talent. The Manchester United striker is in the form of his life, not only scoring wonderful goals but terrorising opponents with his determination and decisiveness and singlehandedly influencing outcomes in a manner he briefly achieved for England at Euro 2004 but until now has never managed to replicate for his club.
The change from good player to unstoppable force of nature was sudden and unexpected, and Wayne Rooney puts it down to Fabio Capello's influence. "I am scoring more goals because I have changed my position," he explained after his four-goal one-man show against Hull. "I'm playing further forward and in the middle of the penalty area. It was Capello who suggested this to me. He said I needed to be in the danger areas and I think he's right."
Here is what Capello had to say after watching Rooney help demolish Manchester City in the Carling Cup semi-final. "Rooney has improved a lot during the last two years and this season he has been fantastic. He has been United's leader on the pitch. For me, he has improved in every area and in one part of the pitch especially – close to goal. That is where he needs to be. I have watched him this year and he is showing a new maturity."
So far, so good. Rooney does appear to be blossoming both on and off the field in United's care, rapidly turning into the devastating player everyone hoped he would become while at the same time managing to pick a sensible path through the tawdriness of the celebrity circus that nowadays envelops football.
Few at Old Trafford will mind if the England manager's input has refined their best player's game and made him a more efficient goalscorer, though sharper-eyed observers may already have spotted a flaw in the above analysis. It simply isn't true. None of it. Rooney has not changed his position, has not become a goal-hanger or a specialist in playing off the last defender like Michael Owen or Jermain Defoe, and has not stopped covering almost the whole area of the pitch. He is certainly doing something better and more effectively than he has been, and has changed position in that he is now the central prong of the United attack without having to fit in around other forward players, but the idea that he waits around in advanced upfield areas until United can get the ball to him is demonstrably false.
The four goals against Hull could be termed a finisher's haul, but that was mainly because United ended up dominating the game and most of the play was around the opposition penalty area in any case. Against better-matched opponents in highly competitive games it has been a different story. The pass to Ryan Giggs that helped set up the first goal against City, the one Capello marvelled at while convalescing after knee surgery in Switzerland, was delivered from the halfway line out on the left wing, exactly the sort of position Rooney is supposed to have given up occupying. The stunning counterattack he launched and completed against Arsenal last week began just outside his own penalty area, with an astute pass to Nani, and by the time Rooney had galloped into the opposite box to supply an immaculate first-time finish he must have travelled 60 or 70 yards.
It appears to this observer that Rooney is doing just what he has always done, only with more confidence and authority and with a notably improved end product. Perhaps the two go together, and perhaps if Rooney believes he is playing a different game, whether he actually is or not, he should just be allowed to get on with it because the results speak from themselves. Following the Leeds v Tottenham game on the car radio and then on television on Wednesday, I heard two different commentators refer to the newly improved David Bentley as a confidence player. All footballers are confidence players. Perhaps some have lower thresholds and more delicate balances than others, but no player, indeed no human being, is immune to the sometimes unfathomable pendulum swings of self‑belief. Confidence, Sir Alex Ferguson once said, is the key to about 99% of what is achieved in any walk of life.
Confidence, surely, is what is propelling Rooney at present. For whatever reason, something has clicked into place and he is right on top of his game. Not only is he United's main man he is equipped to be England's main man, and in a World Cup year that is an exciting prospect. His chances of becoming the next England captain were real, too. Not only would he have conducted himself better than John Terry – he could hardly have conducted himself worse – but for any given England game he is a far more automatic choice than the out of form Steven Gerrard or the injury-dogged Rio Ferdinand, and that is an important consideration.
Capello knows that and his elevation of Ferdinand, no saint and not always available, rather confirms the view that the captaincy role is not all that important. Not as important as allowing Rooney's talent to flourish without any extra pressures or distractions. While Rooney has every chance of being a brilliant England captain one day, that day can wait. With further revelations imminent, Capello merely made a pragmatic decision over Terry. His second decision was the clever one.