Yesterday was more evidence that Wayne Rooney truly is a rare and strange beast. There are a few other footballers who have his ability to produce such an imperfect greatness. His inconsistency is not the normal type of inconsistency where a player has both good games and bad. Rooney has great minutes and shocking minutes, glorious seconds and inexplicable seconds, loose touches and classy cross-field passes. These two extremes of Wayne are perfectly captured in the build-up to his spectacular bicycle kick winner against Manchester City in 2011.
Rooney's attempted sideways lay-off for the onrushing Darren Fletcher ends up with the ball ballooning backwards ten yards in the air. His contact is so wayward that the ball rebounds off his right foot and onto his left knee. Ten seconds later, Rooney had scored a goal of the season contender. It is the 28-year-old's capability to veer between pub player and a world-class talent in such a short space of time on a regular basis that marks Rooney out from his peers. He was named man of the match after his inswinging corner set up Robin Van Persie's headed winner in United's 1-0 win over Arsenal, despite being dispossessed or turned over nine times, more than any other player on the pitch.
That is not to say Rooney was necessarily undeserving, there were few outstanding candidates in a mediocre match and he did produce some moments of real quality and his energy levels were impressive. Rooney's crosses were always threatening and he showed superb composure to deceive Laurent Koscielny by feinting to shoot on the edge of the box before dragging his left-footed shot wide.
Rooney appears to be benefiting from arriving at pre-season training in the best shape he has been in 'for five years' and is pressing opposition defenders and holding midfielders with a vigour not seen that often since Cristiano Ronaldo departed and in 2009 and he became 'the man' at United. It may not have not have been a coincidence that Rooney rocked up at Carrington seven pounds overweight that Summer after admitting he had a few too many 'bevvies'.
Indiscipline remains in his game, as evidenced by his eternal quest to chip the goalkeeper from outside the box which is now verging into the territory of Albert Einstein's definition of insanity. (If you keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results.) Unfortunately like a gambling addict, Rooney may have been scarred by victories at an early age. At the age of 11, he eschewed the usual routine for the Everton mascot of taking shots to warm up goalkeeper Neville Southall in favour of chipping Southall repeatedly. This unsurprisingly angered the club legend and 1985 FWA footballer of the year who called Rooney a 'flash git'.
For better and at times for worse, Rooney always has his foot firmly pressed down on the accelerator and is very reluctant to put on the brakes. He recklessly lunged at Aaron Ramsey off the ground without control and after making an intervention on the edge of his own box, ran 50 yards for a body-check.
It is his maddening inconsistency of technique that most frustrates however and means it is almost impossible for him to produce a complete performance without the caveats of heavy touches and misplaced passes. This may sound like harsh criticism after Rooney's fine start to the season but there has already been an opportunity cost to his presence as the starting number ten in the United side. Shinji Kagawa is clearly more comfortable playing centrally and the signing of Mezut Ozil wasn't considered due to Rooney's presence in the squad. Ozil is not perfect and he was a peripheral figure at Old Trafford but Ozil's technique will never let him down. Rooney is a more powerful athlete and a better finisher than the German but lacks the polish of world-class number tens like Ozil.
Rooney should be compared with the best players in the world in his position because he plays for Manchester United and he is currently being paid like one of them. This list has him as the seventh highest paid footballer in the world, just ahead of Sergio Aguero. With one year left on his contract after this season, Rooney will either sign a new deal or leave next Summer. This presumes that Ed Woodward won't follow Borussia Dortmund's lead with Robert Lewandowski and let leave Rooney leave on a Bosman to thwart Chelsea, but that is the exception to the rule and its hard to imagine the Glazers would sanction losing a valuable asset for nothing. So far, Rooney is delivering in his contract year but unless he breaks the pattern of his whole career, there will always be a slightly frustrating ceiling on the heights he will scale.
