THE INDIE
The bulletins about Rooney's form can cease. The lost gifts have been found and all is well in Wayne's world. Even crude comments from yobbish supporters would have not made a dent on him yesterday, if any critics could have been found among the awed masses at the JJB Stadium.
Rooney, who has been a pale shadow since he returned from suspension, re-emerged in his full, resplendent colours to drag Manchester United to their third away win of the season and maintain their position at the top of the Premiership. He hit the bar and had an influential hand in two goals, while giving notice his impish best has returned.
You want proof? Look at United's injury-time third goal. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer played a pass that was behind him but Rooney completed the one-two with an outrageous flick of his heel. Solskjaer still had a lot to do, and he did it with exemplary efficiency, but it was Rooney's touch that lifted the goal into the realm of the extraordinary.
"Over 90 minutes he was right back to his best," the United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, said. "He and Louis Saha were a right handful." Agreeing it was Rooney's best performance of the season, he added: "There were some signs he was coming back, and the two internationals helped him get the required number of matches to bring the right pitch to his game."
Wigan Athletic's manager, Paul Jewell, concurred. "He is a fantastic player," he said. "Anyone who has a modicum of football nous would know that if he was not playing as well as he can, he's still a world-class player. Any team without him is a lesser team."
A lesser team would just about sum up United's first half, in which, Rooney apart, they played with a coherence and understanding that suggested they had been spending too much time watching England. Wigan took less than five minutes to profit, and although Patrice Evra was unlucky to concede a free-kick when the ball reared up and hit his hand there was nothing fortunate about the free-kick that followed. Denny Landzaat tapped the ball, Kevin Kilbane teed it up, and Leighton Baines cracked a shot from 25 yards past a flimsy wall and the diving Edwin van der Sar.
THE OBSERVER
Good news for Steve McClaren at last. England can relax a little, Wayne Rooney is on his way back to form.
He might not be banging in the goals yet, but Rooney hit the bar here as well as laying on two of Manchester United's goals and if he carries on at this rate of improvement, in five months' time the England striker should be something approaching Superman again.
'That's Wayne's best performance in a United shirt this season, especially the second half,' Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, said. 'With Louis Saha he was a real handful. We always said he only needed games and I think the two internationals might have helped him.'
If that was cheek from the mischievous Scot, it was nowhere as cheeky as the United fans in the first half, parading a banner suggesting they were bigger than England at a time when they were trailing to Wigan. The home side were good value for their lead for the first 45 minutes, even though their only plan seemed to be to try and hang on to it, but the game was up as soon as Ferguson sent on Ryan Giggs for the second half to allow Rooney to come in from the left and forage through the middle with Saha.
From then on it was a question of how many United would score, with Rooney popping up right and left to find space and play others in, and Wigan knew at the end that only indifferent finishing let them off relatively lightly. 'They battered us in the second half,' the ever-honest Paul Jewell said. 'We were too easy to play against and we were well beaten.'
That is a familiar scenario for Jewell, who has had the dubious honour of losing 4-0 to United on no fewer than four occasions when in charge of Wigan and before that Bradford, though at least this time his side were able to alter the script. Barely four minutes were on the clock when Patrice Evra was penalised for handball 30 yards out and after Denny Landzaat and Kevin Kilbane had tapped the free-kick back, Leighton Baines comprehensively beat Edwin Van der Sar with a blistering drive.
Baines could find himself in the England squad soon, on the strength of his last two under-21s performances and the fact that Ashley Cole will be suspended for the next competitive fixture, though on this occasion the left-back's defending was not as impressive as his shooting. Twice in the first half he was skinned by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who is only a stand-in winger in the absence of Cristiano Ronaldo, and just before the half-hour Baines could only stand and gawp like everyone else as Rooney turned him in his own area to crash a shot against the bar.
That was a warning for Wigan, as was Evra bringing a fine save from Chris Kirkland at the end of the first half. Looking particularly blunt in attack, where Emile Heskey and Henri Camara are a million miles away from forming a partnership, the home side knew they faced a long 45 minutes once Giggs took the field.
SUNDAY TIMES
Manchester United's supporters, nothing if not one-eyed, chorused that we could stick our "effing England" where the sun doesn't shine, but for those of us of less parochial bent it was uplifting, after a disappointing week, to see Wayne Rooney back to something like his inspirational best, very much the driving force behind a victory that keeps the pressure on the champions Chelsea.
Rooney was outstanding in the second half, making goals for Louis Saha and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as United hit back from an early deficit to "batter" Wigan, as Paul Jewell put it, after the interval. With better finishing, the margin would have been doubled. Not far behind Rooney among the contenders for man of the match was the resurgent Solskjaer who, after a catalogue of injuries that would have finished a less courageous character, is enjoying an Indian summer that few would begrudge him, with five goals in his past eight games.
For Wigan, an afternoon that began so well, when Leighton Baines scored after five minutes, ended in further disappointment. They have one win to show for their first seven Premiership matches, and the fickleness of their fan base is such that there were 5,000 empty seats at the JJB for one of the most attractive fixtures of the season. Jewell was "amazed" that barely 20,000 turned out, including a hefty contingent of United followers.
Rooney and Saha received the plaudits, and rightly so, but praise was also due to Ryan Giggs, whose introduction at half-time transformed the game. The Welshman, back after injury, brought craft and penetrative distribution to a previously pedestrian midfield, and his clever imagination kept Wigan on the back foot. Jewell and the new-look team he remodelled during the summer are urgently in need of an encouraging result, and the omens looked good when a handball by Patrice Evra 30 yards out allowed Denny Landzaat and Kevin Kilbane to work a short free kick routine that culminated in Baines beating Edwin van der Sar with a screamer past the goalkeeper's flailing left hand. United couldn't say they hadn't been warned. The young left-back scored from similar range for the England under-21s in the first leg of their playoff against Germany last week. A defender from the opposite end of the age spectrum, Arjan De Zeeuw, threatened to make it 2-0 with a far-post header before United managed to work their way into the game.
Then Solskjaer, skipping past Baines on the right, set up a chance for Rooney, whose shot failed to trouble Chris Kirkland. The same could hardly be said midway through the first half, when the England striker twisted and turned in the penalty area to work an opening, only to see his well-struck shot shiver the crossbar with Kirkland beaten. Emmerson Boyce, an adventurous right-back for Wigan, created a half-chance for Paul Scharner, but the last act of the first half hinted at what was to come, Evra letting fly with a 25-yarder Kirkland was happy to beat away.
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
It came too late to change the course of Steve McClaren's week. But right at the end of seven days he would like to forget came the news that will change his demeanour from dreading the arrival of England's next game to counting the days, that Wayne Rooney is back to tearing apart Premiership defences. It might even put that terrifying smile back on McClaren's face.
Rooney deserved to cap this imperious performance with his first goals since the season's opening day and would have done so had his chip over the goalkeeper late on stayed just a few feet lower, or his breathtaking turn and right-foot shot from Patrice Evra's cross in the first half not wobbled Chris Kirkland's crossbar.
But, in this mood, in this form, the goals will come. And they are almost luxury extras given his most important role for the team, operating deep to pull opposing defences out of place before sending his fellow strikers scurrying behind enemy lines with bending passes or little flicks.
Rooney at his best is like Thierry Henry, a man who plays in a position you cannot really categorise. He was wide out left when supplying the cross for Louis Saha's goal — though the latter had to add plenty of brilliance of his own before converting — and for United's third goal, in injury time, he materialised on the right to clip a pass over his head to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
At other times, he was racing back 20 yards to make the sort of tackle that Michael Carrick ought to be making, or slipping between Fitz Hall and Antonio Valencia as they tried to challenge him. Trying to stop him in such form is like trying to catch a rhino in a butterfly net.
United manager Sir Alex Ferguson said beforehand that he had no worries about Rooney, no concerns about his form not returning. Afterwards, he said: "He was right back to his best for 90 minutes." Ferguson even gave England some rare credit, adding: "Even the international games helped him to reach the right pitch in his game."
Wigan manager Paul Jewell, who could appreciate Rooney's genius even though his team were the victims of it, said of the criticism: "It's all nonsense. Anyone who is concerned about Wayne Rooney's form doesn't know the game. He would get into any team in the world."
For all that, Jewell felt that his team folded too easily. And we would certainly have expected the Wigan of last season to have come much closer to victory after taking a fifth-minute lead with an absolute scorcher from Leighton Baines.