Lakshay Khurana
The new Premier League season is less than a week away and Wayne Rooney has had a perfect week with his testimonial taking place and having won yet another trophy with the club.
However, having struggled as a striker under Louis van Gaal before impressing in a midfield role for both club and country, the skipper has lost a lot of his value in the eyes of the fans and isn’t the goal scorer as he used to be.
The Portuguese manager warned during his introductory press conference earlier that Rooney does not have a future at Manchester United in the midfield position which he occupied during the spring and sustained in during England’s failed Euro 2016 campaign.
Now that a few world-class signings have been made, his image as the main man in United might vanish away sooner than expected. Zlatan, Marcus, and Henrikh will be giving him tough competition to be selected regularly and also making it difficult to continue with his important presence in the eyes of his teammates and the fans.
Wayne Rooney has never played a season which made him look useless for the team. The English captain has always improved in the areas where his manager/team needed him the most to do so. His versatility on the pitch can hardly be matched by any other professional footballer. The work rate at both attack and defence he possesses is very high, which makes him an important asset to the team. His experience and loyalty to United alone make him the most important player in the team at the moment, and he certainly wouldn’t want to lose that mark already.
The skipper needs to work hard in specific areas if he wants to remain as the team’s Talisman.
Abilities Rooney should be improving are:
- Dribbling
We have often seen him struggling to get past players one-on-one and that makes him look poor and fatigued at the end of that particular attack most of the time. A little bit of improvement in dribbling can help him a lot in attacks, creating chances for the striker especially.
- Finishing
He obviously was one of the best finishers in the game until 2011 or 2012. After the signing of Robin Van Persie, Rooney didn’t get to play at the striker position anymore. He had to switch to a more playmaker role, thus, losing the ability to score clinically. And it has been continuing ever since. If he manages to score even 10 goals in the Premier League, he will obviously restore everyone’s faith in him as a player who can still score.
- Possession/Ball control
Wayne Rooney also finds it kind of hard to keep the ball to himself for more than a couple of seconds when inside or near the opposition’s box. We have seen him shoot or pass the ball in a hurry in these situations. Rooney needs to let his younger self get back in those boots and remain calm in posession. He has to train to deal with these kinds of situations if he is to play at the line up ahead on the pitch.
