Rooney the jewel in crown for Glazer

Manchester United 3 Debrecen 0

With Glazer’s sons Joel, Avi and Bryan watching from the directors’ box for the first time since the American’s hugely controversial £790 million takeover, Wayne Rooney produced a command performance to virtually guarantee safe passage into the Champions League group stages.

The £27m Alex Ferguson spent on the teenage England striker 12 months ago may be small fry to the cash invested in United by the Glazers, but it is on Rooney’s shoulders that their ambitious business plan rests.

And for last night at least, Rooney was strong enough to carry United to victory, scoring the seventh minute opener, then setting up Ruud van Nistelrooy and Cristiano Ronaldo for the second half strikes which should make the return leg in Budapest a formality on August 24.

The sight of Rooney in full flow will have been greeted with far greater enthusiasm than the 16,000 empty seats, although many more performances like this and tickets will soon by like gold dust again.

For all the rancour and recrimination the Glazers’ takeover has generated, it is a firm belief within the club that success on the field will prove to be the decisive factor in whether the new owners are accepted or not.

The sight of so many empty seats was a throwback to the Martin Edwards days of the late 1980s, before he launched the club on to the Stock Market, the move, in Ferguson’s eyes, which made buy-out inevitable.

As they settled into their seats, the three brothers did not have a chance to assess how much revenue the absences had cost before their most valuable asset drilled home the first goal of their stewardship.

Rooney’s 12-yard effort was not quite in the class of some of the magnificent strikes he produced amid the 17-goal haul of his first Old Trafford campaign. But the teenager still showed an admirable eye for goal when Csaba Szathari accidentally dribbled the ball into his direction, clinically dispatching a first-time shot into the bottom corner.

It should have been the start of a goal avalanche as the Hungarians struggled to adjust to their surroundings. At times it appeared only burly central defender Laszlo Eger stood between United and a runaway victory.

Eger managed to get a foot or head on almost anything that threatened Debrecen’s goal, no mean feat considering Cristiano Ronaldo was causing mayhem as he flitted between wings.

Ronaldo did have United’s only other decent chance of the opening period, darting on to Paul Scholes’ slide rule pass before unleashing a powerful angled shot Norbert Csernyanszki managed to keep out.

Nevertheless, the hosts were still only a goal in front at the interval, a lead which would have been wiped out within seconds of the restart had Spanish referee not awarded a soft free-kick against Peter Halmosi for a aerial challenge on Gary Neville shortly before he beat Edwin van der Sar with a precise strike.

The let-off was exactly what United required to spark them into life and they soon had the game - and the tie - wrapped up.

Given the form he showed during his first three seasons at Old Trafford, it was no surprise Van Nistelrooy was next to get his name on the scoresheet.

Yet the chance Rooney presented him with when he rolled a perfect pass to the Dutchman to set him running at the visitors’ goal was exactly the kind of opportunity Van Nistelrooy spurned so regularly on United’s Far East tour.

One sensed, with the added pressure of competitive combat applied, the former PSV Eindhoven man would rediscover his goalscoring touch, and so it proved as he fired home for the 37th time in just 40 European appearances for the Red Devils.

Debrecen’s defence was breached again shortly afterwards, with Rooney again at the heart of the move.

Van Nistelrooy set the attack in motion with a disguised reverse pass, which Rooney took in his stride before pulling a cross back which invited Ronaldo to sweep home.

MAN UTD: Van der Sar, Neville, Ferdinand, Silvestre, O’Shea, Fletcher, Scholes, Keane (Park 67), Ronaldo (Smith 67), van Nistelrooy (Rossi 82), Rooney.

DEBRECEN: Csernyanszki, Nikolov, Eger, Mate, Szatmari, Dombi (Boor 85), Sandor, Vukmir, Halmosi, Kerekes (Ibrahima Sidibe 52), Bogdanovic (Kiss 60).

Referee: Luis Medina Cantalejo (Spain).