Kind words little comfort to Wayne Rooney

Manchester United 4 Leicester City 1: The kind words came from all directions for Wayne Rooney, yet it is safe to assume none gave the Manchester United and England captain a great degree of comfort.

Jose Mourinho, the man who dropped Rooney to the substitutes’ bench, Chris Smalling, the man who replaced him as captain, and even Claudio Ranieri, the manager whose side were dismantled by a revitalised, Rooney-less United, played down the significance of his absence.

Yet as he watched from the dugout as United got ruthless, Rooney must have known that while Saturday’s events might not have meant the ‘end of an era’, as some observers claim, they did represent the clearest threat ever to his position as a mainstay of the club.