IN A LONELY PLACE

"Sometimes," Wayne Rooney said, "you need to look inside yourself."

The very thought of England's best footballing talent engaging in self-analysis appears faintly ridiculous. The first 20 years of his life were supposed to have been lived entirely through instinct.

But Rooney in the flesh is altogether a more surprising, intelligent and aware character than Rooney the caricature, even if 20 does seem rather a young age to be publishing the first of several volumes of an autobiography that his agent Paul Stretford says will be "like the Star Wars series" - with Rooney presumably cast as Luke Skywalker.

''It's nice to talk about football,'' Rooney said.

''After games there is sometimes no one to talk to, it's all building up inside you. If you speak to someone, it is a release and it's nice to get it off your chest, especially the stuff about the World Cup."

Had his metatarsal not given way, had Sven-Goran Eriksson not rushed him back for England and had he not been exhausted and frustrated by playing on his own up front in the World Cup quarter-final with Portugal, the photograph on the cover of My Story So Far would have been very different. It would not have been the lonely figure, hands on hips, staring into space.

One thing Rooney hopes will change when Eriksson's successor, Steve McClaren, names his first England squad this afternoon is that he will not be employed again as a lone striker and certainly not in a World Cup quarter-final.

"I prefer to play in a two up front. It was hard on my own. I had not done it before and I would have liked to have someone up there for support really. Steve McClaren knows how the players feel about how they want to play. It is his decision what system he wants and, hopefully, we can do it with more attacking players."

With the sale of Ruud van Nistelrooy to Real Madrid, the pressure on Rooney to find the net for Manchester United will be even more intense, especially in the Champions League, an arena where the Dutchman's dominance was in contrast to increasingly feeble performances by his United team-mates.

''Ruud's a fantastic player, you can see that by the amount of goals he has scored over the years,'' Rooney added. ''It will be hard to replace him because of that simple fact - he averaged 30 a season. I might be asked to go a bit further forward because of that.