Rooney Plans To End FA Cup Drought

Wayne Rooney has lifted nine major honours and earned countless individual awards during his illustrious 11-season career at Manchester United, though the club captain is continually irritated by the FA Cup’s glaring omission from his glittering trophy collection.

Surprisingly, there are only two players in Louis van Gaal’s squad who have won football’s oldest cup competition. Robin van Persie did it in 2005 when he stepped off the bench to score a penalty in Arsenal’s shootout success over United, before Juan Mata earned the Man of the Match champagne for his part in Chelsea’s 2-1 win over Liverpool in 2012.

Prior to his January transfer to West Bromwich Albion, Darren Fletcher was the last remaining member from United’s cup winners of 2004, when goals from a flourishing Cristiano Ronaldo and Ruud van Nistelrooy (2) secured a comfortable 3-0 win over Millwall at the Millennium Stadium.

Rooney moved to Old Trafford from Everton that summer and has since been on the losing side in two FA Cup finals, firstly in the 2005 shootout defeat to Arsenal and again in 2007 when Didier Drogba’s solitary goal in extra-time earned Chelsea a 1-0 triumph at the new Wembley.

All of this adds to Rooney’s desire for cup glory and the in-form striker is confident his team-mates can go all the way this season. However, before anybody thinks about lifting silverware, he acknowledges there is a much more pressing challenge at hand.

“We have an FA Cup quarter-final against Arsenal on Monday and that is massive for us,” Rooney told ManUtd.com and the Press Association. “We haven’t been to a final for a few years, we want to try to win that game and we are looking forward to that.

“Of course, I think it is a massive trophy. It is a trophy that, growing up as a youngster, I used to love watching and I was fortunate enough to see Everton lift the FA Cup in 1995 when I was nine years old. It is something which I would love to do and hopefully it can be this year.”