Is Rooney to blame entirely for his slump?

It is pretty clear to everyone that Manchester United is not having its best season in a long time. There have been various claims to this loss of form of the team, from blaming the manager Louis van Gaal to cursing the forwards for missing their chances. While the poor run still continues as they crashed out of the Champions League, the blame game has yet to reach a consensus.  There seems to be a growing majority against one particular player in the squad though- Wayne Rooney.

Wayne ‘Wazza’ Rooney can easily be considered as one of the best players to be produced by England, entering the new millennium. His striking capabilities were below none during his best periods in the game, and his ability to find the ball at the right positions at the right time pushed United to its pinnacle, winning the league several times. But as with every other player, age started to get the better of him. He has started to falter, missing some chances he could easily bury before. So naturally, when he couldn’t, fans were disappointed.  And when they started to voice their opinion, it hurt his own self-confidence, like any other player would.

Yes, he has deteriorated. Yes, his touches are wayward now. Yes, his finishing has an error of a couple of yards. And yes, his speed has fallen drastically! But is that the only reason why he is performing oh-so-poorly? It may not be the case. His form has often carried the team to the trophy at times, much like van Persie, during his tenure at the club. He belonged to a strike force at a time, a trio which comprised of Cristiano Ronaldo on one wing and Tevez on the other. He had Berbatov as his fellow-aid. He had Scholes at the back, and Giggs pushing hard. Let’s compare that to the recent Manchester United squad- Rooney in the center, with Martial on one side and Mata on the other. On the few days Martial doesn’t play, it’s Lingard. Manchester United do not have a replacement for Scholes in the middle, and from the looks of things, it is likely that it will remain that way for some time to come.

Yes, this team potentially has a lot of creativity, with the likes of Mata and Herrera and yet our strikers failed us in the initial stages of the season. Going back, Scholes was the creative architect of the team. Almost everyone else relied on team chemistry, the counter-attacks and the quick one-twos to weave past defenders with ease. It was not creativity that often gave United the goals, it was the ability to move fast and as a single unit- with Rooney spearheading it. Yes, a couple of creative midfielders might provide the occasional through-ball, but when you have developed as a striker whose sole purpose is to finish a sudden break, can you entirely blame him, as the system around him as completely changed?

Let’s take a sneak-peek into his stats in the Premier League over the years, stats from Squawka:

He has had 2 goals and no assists to his name in the 12 matches he has played this season. Just 2 seasons ago, he had 17 goals in the 29 games he had played. Even last season, he managed to score 10. But it doesn’t seem as though he would be able to match his tally this time around.
When we look at his shot accuracy though, it has remained quite consistent since the 2012/13 season to the present- around 50%. (53% in 2013/14 and 2012/13,  51% in 2014/15 and 50% presently). Unlike the popular opinion, the stats speak otherwise- he hasn’t lost his finishing as bad as it is claimed. Even the number of shots he has been taking on the goal has been almost as much as the previous season in the same time period.

What has changed is are the parameters which are team dependant. For example, Key passes have reduced drastically from how often they used to be. A mere 12 chances created in 12 games does not match the 56 chances he created in 29 games just 2 years ago. For key passes to actually formulate and develop, one needs a sidekick who is capable enough of finishing the dirty job. The tactics used by the team does not include any other player alongside him for him to be as effective as he is. For the very same reason, his key passing statistics have also fallen do. When we compare the number of forward passes to the number of backward passes over the period of a season, they tend to be close.
Unfortunately so, the past two seasons has shown a deviation from his natural best. Both these seasons, he has had a comparatively higher number of backward passes in comparison to forward ones. This obviously means lack of opportunity up front, and lack of movement ahead.

In a pundit review for Sky Sports, Matt le Tessier had something on the same lines to claim about the English captain and striker. He said- “Rooney is probably suffering a bit from United having changed their emphasis from ‘we will win every game because we’ve got the best players’ to one that says ‘we’re not going to lose first and foremost.'” He also emphasised “He suffers because they don’t attack in the same numbers as when they believed they could outscore whoever they came up against.”  “This is probably the longest slump we’ve seen. He has had dips in form before but I don’t remember him having ever struggled for this long.”

Louis van Gaal’s tactics have taken a toll on the man. Ever since the Dutchman arrived at  the club, his ideology never really seemed to rub on with Rooney. Being used to playing alongside a secondary striker with Sir Alex’s team, he found the build-up he often had leading to a goal missing. Apart from that, he was often asked to move to the midfield to accommodate for an unorthodox, and honestly concerning, choice of Fellaini as a striker. To be on the top of one’s game, one needs regular playing time at their own comfortable position. While Rooney did manage to do a decent job almost anywhere on the pitch, even helping the defensive four at times, he never got used to his favourite position up ahead in LvG’s tenure. He never got the chance to mould himself into the single striker footballer which the team needed. Although playing on the professional level demands certain pre-requisites and being malleable is one of them, Rooney may not be the only one to blame for his dip.