Rooney Feat Underrated

Wayne Rooney's goal for Manchester United against Stoke on Saturday saw him take his tally to 250 for the club and clear of Sir Bobby Charlton on the all-time list.

Adam Bate reflects on Rooney's record and wonders whether the inevitability of the achievement has blinded us to its brilliance…

"We know that Wayne Rooney will be the best scorer," said Jose Mourinho. "It is just a question of when." Impossible to disagree with the Manchester United boss there. But the curious thing with Rooney is that many felt this record would be his from the day he arrived.

When Sir Alex Ferguson described the 18-year-old Rooney as "the best young player this country has seen in the past 30 years" few had cause to disagree. But he was only a teenager, younger then than Marcus Rashford is now. And yet, this was no callow prospect.

He turned up at Old Trafford fully formed and with a £30m price-tag to prove it. His potential had not been merely hinted at but rammed into European faces as he bullied and bewitched the best that the continent had to offer at Euro 2004.

Man of the match against the France of Zinedine Zidane and Thierry Henry, the defending champions no less, he was expected to be an instant hit upon completing his move to Manchester. No settling-in period was allowed. None was required.

Rooney duly delivered. There was that Champions League hat-trick against Fenerbahce on his debut and the goal - complete with celebration - at Anfield on his return to Merseyside. 17 goals. No teenager has scored more in his first season at United.

And so began the feverish calculations. How many might he score? When will those Manchester United and England totals be broken? "Eventually he'll have all the records," said United great Denis Law. He said it before Rooney had kicked a ball for the club.

All of which helps to explain the sheer weight of expectation from the outset. Rooney's route to the top was so well anticipated that it has warped all that has followed. Both a responsibility and a burden, albeit one he's carried with relatively good grace over the years.

The difficulty? That the very thing that made him a phenomenon - his completeness at such a young age - left little room for manoeuvre. The extraordinary came to become ordinary. 20 goals a season is his average but it should never have been regarded as average.

Rooney's peak did see him double that opening season tally of 17 - twice scoring 34 goals in a campaign during his mid-20s. Incidentally, Cristiano Ronaldo only passed 30 goals once in a United shirt. And throughout it all there was far more to Rooney's game than the goals.

With power and pace at his peak, there was his assist on the counter in the Champions League semi-final at Arsenal in 2009. And after Ronaldo's departure that summer, he tried to carry his team. The 2011 final at Wembley saw him rage against the Barcelona machine.

Eight years of Ballon d'Or nominations tell a tale, although Rooney only briefly suggested he might share the rarefied air that became the preserve of his peers, Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Instead, the Englishman maintained mere excellence.

The longevity that is a necessity for such accomplishments as this should not be downplayed. A dozen seasons of scoring at least 14 goals is already twice as many as Didier Drogba managed at Chelsea. Three times as many as Eric Cantona at United.

The Frenchman, of course, retired at 30. Rooney is now 31. Many questioned whether he could continue for so long but the sight of him curling home goal number 250 is a reminder that Rooney is the great survivor, seeing off the competition time and time again.

He began up front alongside Ruud van Nistelrooy. Now he is competing with Rashford, the young man Mourinho is tipping to break Rooney's record one day. For the teenager, it is just a dream, but for Rooney that dream has now become a reality.

So what felt inevitable from the hat-trick against Fenerbahce and through the 246 in between - the halfway hits and overhead kicks - finally came to pass at the bet365 Stadium. He was the big man when he first arrived. Wayne Rooney became the biggest of United men on Saturday.

Credit: Skysports.com