Rooney v Fabregas? No contest

EVERYONE knows about Wayne Rooney the footballer, Wayne Rooney the goal-scorer, Wayne Rooney the workaholic, but Wayne Rooney the sprinter?

Rooney put in the sort of performance at Arsenal that wins titles. He was, as you would expect, a constant threat to the Arsenal goal and scored the all-important second goal. Yet he was also a pivotal player in his own half and that second goal, a breath-taking counter attack that had begun in United’s own penalty area, had seen him involved in the build-up deep into his own half.

He was also nearer to his own goalkeeper when he set the wheels in motion for Ji-Sung Park’s third and no wonder Alex Ferguson purred afterwards that Arsenal simply couldn’t cope with him.

Yet it was not his range of skills or raw strength on the ball that were the Gunners’ undoing: it was his running.

Consider that second goal. Rooney received the ball with his back to goal and wriggled free of a lackadaisical marker to send Nani away down the right. The Portugal international motored across the half-way line with plenty of red and white shirts running back intent on doing something to stifle the move.

Yet Rooney was more determined than any of them.

He came bursting forward, overtaking first one opponent then another and another as his team-mate pressed on with the ball. Nani looked up, played a diagonal ball and Rooney produced a sprinter’s finish to get in ahead of the dozing Denilson, who seemed to have no idea there was even any danger, and slot home.

It was a fine finish to a magnificent move and Rooney had run a lung-busting 70 yards or so to make it happen.

Now consider the third.

Rooney played a simple pass back to Michael Carrick, who played a first-time ball over the top of the defence for Park to chase.

It had left defenders trailing and only Gael Clichy was in a position to come across and challenge the South Korean. Except he never did, until it was too late anyway.

At first that seemed simply mystifying.

Why hadn’t the Frenchman reacted sooner? Surely it was obvious Park would go on to have a shot?

A television replay from a camera positioned behind the goal had the answer. Rooney. For the England international was making another bull-chested run towards goal and again he was motoring faster than the Arsenal defenders. Clichy knew if he went to Park then the ball would be slipped across to Rooney for an equally simple opportunity. The left-back was caught in two minds and in no man’s land. So Park went on and scored.

No Arsenal player came remotely near emulating the individual brilliance of Rooney, or Nani for that matter.

Beforehand the onus had been on Cesc Fabregas, the captain, midfield pivot and world-class play-maker, to produce the sort of performance that could trouble and hen topple United. It did not come to pass.

True, the Spaniard was involved in most of Arsenal’s more enterprising moments and it might have been a different story had Sami Nasri not made a hash of a step-over attempt in the United box that ruined an early chance. But this was not Fabregas’s day. His only spark of inspiration came too late to save his side as his quick-thinking with a free-kick allowed Nasri to pump over a cross that led to Thomas Vermaelen’s consolation goal.

But that only went in because it came off the backside of a United player – Wes Brown was the unlucky man – and that more or less summed up Fabregas and Arsenal’s day.

Rooney was a deserved victor – although he did miss a stoppage time sitter.