Rooney Praises Game Plan After Arsenal Win

Wayne Rooney believes his Manchester United team-mates executed Louis van Gaal’s game plan to perfection on Saturday evening by securing a vital 2-1 victory over Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium.

The Reds set up to counter attack and were forced to defend for long periods of the game, but crucially broke the deadlock via a Kieran Gibbs own goal in the second half before Rooney chipped over Emiliano Martinez to cap a wonderful move on the break.

Although Olivier Giroud hit back in the fifth minute of injury time, United held on to record a morale-boosting win in the Barclays Premier League and Rooney was clearly enthused by his side’s performance when speaking after the final whistle.

“It was a very important victory,” said Wayne. “We weathered the storm at times, especially in the first half, and then we knew we could hit them on the counter attack, we knew they were vulnerable on the break and we did that.

“We rode our luck at times, our goalkeeper was fantastic for us today but we hit them with two good goals. It was quite a difficult game, they had a lot of possession but we hit them on the break and that was our game plan.

“We knew we had to get as many players into the defence as we could and we did that by putting five at the back. We had a bit of experience in myself, Michael and Fellaini in the midfield to try and protect them and I felt we did that well at times.

"We also knew we had the legs in terms of Robin [van Persie], Angel [di Maria] and myself joining in on the break, which we saw to good effect in the second half.”

United have moved up to fourth in the Barclays Premier League table and are 13 points off leaders Chelsea ahead of the important winter schedule. Rather than getting carried away, Rooney is focused on gleaning six points from the next two home matches against Hull City and Stoke City.

“We are taking each game as it comes,” the United captain insisted. “It has been a bit of an indifferent start for us this season and we hope now to go on a good run of games and judge the position we are in after Christmas.

“We have got two home games coming up [Hull and Stoke at Old Trafford] and we feel like we should be taking six points out of them. We want to try to build a bit of momentum going into the New Year so today was a massive result in terms of starting that.”