Wayne Rooney struggling in Louis van Gaal’s strict Manchester United system

Louis van Gaal knew the question was coming and when it did, he had prepared a simple reply. “He had a shot on target, so I am happy,” Manchester United’s manager said of Wayne Rooney. Here was statistical proof that his striker and captain had contributed to United’s 3-1 defeat of Club Brugge in Tuesday’s Champions League playoff first leg.

There was some truth to the idea that Rooney had improved on two listless performances so far in the Premier League against Tottenham and Aston Villa. On neither occasion had he managed a shot on target, not the kind of return expected from a lone striker, especially not from a player of the calibre of someone 19 and a single goal short respectively of all-time scoring records for both club and country.

Yet when United were hunting down their third goal after Memphis Depay had struck twice, a security blanket to take to Belgium next Wednesday, it was eventually delivered by Marouane Fellaini, who had replaced Rooney and scored an old-style centre-forward’s header in the dying seconds.

A lone striker in a 4-3-3 formation needs either the strength of someone like, say, new Liverpool signing Christian Benteke, or the high-cruising speed of Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero, though a combination of both would work best. At the moment, Rooney looks to have neither. On Tuesday, as against Tottenham and Villa, there was hesitancy in possession and something of a reluctance in physical clashes.

Van Gaal’s swift shut-down of that Rooney line of enquiry was typical, but there has been little masking of the England captain’s troubles. The shot on target mentioned was an overhead kick cleared easily by Brugge defenders, and there was just one more moment of improvisation to remind of Rooney’s rich talent.

A reverse flick to Depay from a Luke Shaw cross that set up United’s two-goal hero for a third, a chance the Dutchman missed, was the type of off-the-cuff play that Rooney once regularly delivered. These days, though, in chasing down channels and often playing with his back to goal, opportunities for such decorative play are significantly constrained.

That is almost certainly the result of Van Gaal’s prescribed philosophy. The information that does escape from the training ground suggests everything United players do on the field must now rigorously follow due process. Ad-libbing on the pitch is not remotely encouraged. Last season, it was suggested by training-ground insiders that only Angel Di Maria, before injury and loss of form sidelined him, was allowed to run with the ball and try to beat opponents. This term, it looks as if Depay is the player granted that privilege.

Even Adnan Januzaj, a player whose willowy running can ghost him past defenders, must play with the handbrake on. After his match-winner on Friday at Villa, Van Gaal chose to criticise the young Belgian for repeatedly conceding ball possession. “When you score a goal then you are the hero but I think we are in the pitch to make calls, as a team,” the Dutchman reiterated in his Tuesday postmatch news conference.

It is within that tight framework that Rooney has struggled so far. A player who throughout his career has tried to play his football across as broad a span of the pitch as possible is now asked to occupy himself within a thin sliver of the action, with strays into midfield probably on the banned list.

So far this season, that looks to have diminished his output, a pattern which goes against much of his Old Trafford career. He has scored six times in the 11 opening matches of his seasons at United, with his first ever match proving the high watermark. In September 2004, a dazzling Champions League hat trick against Fenerbahce, completed by a sand-wedge chipped free kick, announced him as a potential United great.

It is a status a medal cabinet containing five Premier League titles and a Champions League and his 230 goals in all competitions suggest he has met, but with Rooney there will always be the sense that he never quite converted his raw materials into a high-class finished product. Examine video footage of Rooney in his first few years as a United player and there seems little comparison. The explosiveness and unremitting energy have been replaced by a player of admittedly increased guile, but the wow factor has gone.

Rooney, like Depay may become if he repeats Tuesday’s feats, was once a player who lifted fans’ heart rates when he ran at panicked defences. In recent times, only a goal against Tottenham in March, when he barrelled through and slotted in, has reminded of that player. And there is one remaining legacy of the old Rooney, the slightly defective touch that back then looked a by-product of his power output and would surely be smoothed by time.

And yet it hasn’t been. Rooney has never gained the limpet first touch of a Paul Scholes or Ryan Giggs, let alone a Dimitar Berbatov or Cristiano Ronaldo. And when his overall play is dropping, his level of control can become especially faulty. In Van Gaal’s system, as a lonely central outlet against massed defences, that lack of proficiency can become problematic. The ball needs to stick.

The time when Rooney can be a top-level target man looks to have passed. His previous season as the lone striker was back in 2009-10, when his movement and a special understanding with Antonio Valencia from the right wing saw him plunder 34 goals. But he is no longer that player, and Van Gaal’s formation, with Depay cutting in from the left to shoot far more often than cross and Juan Mata making incursions from the right flank, does not provide the same quota of chances. Linear football makes him look a lesser, duller player, and back then he could match power with speed.

With a 30th birthday approaching in October, and Rooney a first-teamer since he was a 16-year-old Evertonian, there are heavy miles on the clock. Unlike with Scholes and Giggs, two players who former United manager Sir Alex Ferguson would ration involvement once they reached a certain age, there is little alternative than to play him in a central role, now that Radamel Falcao and Robin van Persie, two strikers whose lack of mobility did not fit the system, have left the club.

The undulating pattern of Rooney’s season-on-season career, where feast so often follows famine, suggests there might soon be a reawakening, a sequence of performances to make us wonder how we ever doubted him, but no goals from the last nine United appearances is an inadequate return. It will take more than a single shot on target to convince that Rooney is back to his best.

John Brewin is a staff writer for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @JohnBrewinESPN.