The Indie:
Paul Jewell turned away from the sublime when he was trying to sum up the essence of Wayne Rooney. Instead, he concentrated on a move that went wrong.
Manchester United were 2-1 up and Rooney had the chance to shoot as he ran past Arjan de Zeeuw in the right of the area and bore down on the Wigan Athletic goal. He thought about it, sensed that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was in a better position, and passed.
In that moment, even though Solskjaer's shot was blocked, Jewell recognised a higher quality. "Wayne Rooney showed his true colours," the Wigan manager said. "He squared it because he thinks more of his team-mates than he does of himself. That speaks volumes. If that's the best player in the world, and in my opinion he is, the first thing he thinks about is not getting his name in the paper, it's getting his team to the top of the League."
A few days earlier, Rooney's generosity would have been viewed in a very different light and you can imagine the accusations of responsibility dodging if he had been still showing signs of a shortage of touch and confidence. After this performance, however, there was not a soul in the JJB Stadium who believed he has permanently surrendered his gifts. Samson has his strength back, and talks to extend his contract beyond 2010 began yesterday.
The beauty of this game was that a study of the young striker was akin to those speeded-up films of flowers in spring. You saw the bud begin to open when he turned Leighton Baines inside out before hitting the bar in the 24th minute, and by stoppage time we had a full flowering as he executed a back-heel to usher Solskjaer towards his fifth goal of the season. By that time, Rooney's body language was screaming: "I'm back".
Which was fortunate for his team, because United were woeful in the first half. Wes Brown could not have located a team-mate with radar, Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra exuded uncertainty, and a 4-3-3 formation looked likely to become as much of a problem for Sir Alex Ferguson as 3-5-2 has for Steve McClaren. The 30-yard thunderbolt from Baines that gave Wigan the lead was the least the visitors could have expected
The Times apply a dose of reality:
"We are living in the era of overreaction," Sir Alex Ferguson had said before this match and it is true. Manchester United's first-half performance at the JJB Stadium was abject, their subsequent improvement the stuff that title-winning teams are made of, while Wayne Rooney's captivating, swashbuckling, ball-juggling display seemed to signify an impending boom after the recent bust.
Time will tell whether United are as good as their strong start to the campaign implies — and some question marks remain, particularly over a lightweight midfield that requires them to win matches the hard way — but there can be no such worries about Rooney. Yes, he has been subdued over the past five weeks; yes, his form has been as bad as has been made out; but no, a player made of such strong stuff — physically and mentally as much as technically — does not "lose it" overnight. Here he was back to something approaching his brilliant best.
After six matches without a win, Paul Jewell, the Wigan Athletic manager, has more pressing concerns than the form of the England forward, but he needed little encouragement to stick up for a fellow Scouser after what he had witnessed.
"In my opinion he's the best player in the world right now," Jewell said. "He showed his true colours today. When it was 2-1 he had a chance to score, but instead he passed it to (Ole Gunnar) Solskjaer. That typified it. He doesn't want to get his name in the papers for scoring. All he cares about is his team winning and still being top of the league."
It was indeed a moment that confirmed Rooney's return to form. If it was a different player, the pass to Solskjaer might have been seen as the sign of a striker lacking confidence. But three minutes earlier he had attempted an outrageous chip over Chris Kirkland that only narrowly missed the target. Then, deep into time added on for stoppages, came an elaborate flick that resulted in a well-taken goal for Solskjaer, the Norway forward's fifth of a season in which little was expected of him after three years of injury problems. As much as the flicks and tricks, though, it was Rooney's workrate and attitude that impressed and it is this unique package that makes him such a commodity.
The Guardian:
Of all the mistakes that can be made against Manchester United, none is as lethal as scoring before some of the players have a fleck of mud on their shorts. There is no more exhilarating sight in English football than watching Wayne Rooney et al chase a game and, given time, they can be ruthless when it comes to meting out their punishments.
Leighton Baines's 30-yard shot past Edwin van der Sar may have looked good but, with 85 minutes still to play, the Wigan left-back succeeded only in ruffling the fur of a sleeping bear. United's response was calculated, decisive and brutally inflicted, incorporating individual performances from Rooney and Ryan Giggs that made it seem faintly preposterous that one has had his state of mind forensically examined and, going a little further back, the other was considered to be so far past his best that there were voluble calls for Ferguson to remove him from the team.
In Rooney's case the number of people willing to theorise about his brief encounter with ordinariness has been overtaken only by the stampede of those now saying it was a senseless debate in the first place. The truth is probably somewhere in between. There was always something misguided about the argument that he had fallen out of love with the game, but there was certainly legitimate cause for concern after some of his recent displays, most notably the Champions League tie in Benfica when even simple tasks such as controlling the ball seemed embarrassingly beyond him.
Saturday's performance was the first time since the opening weekend of the season that he can have felt wholly satisfied with his contribution and, brilliant as he was, there was still the feeling that the rehabilitation was not yet complete.
Rooney being Rooney, his recovery process was the weekend's big talking point but it was not the England player who instigated United comeback but Giggs's introduction at half-time, plus Ferguson's abandonment of the confounded 4-3-2-1 system. United won the European Cup, scattering all before them, playing 4-4-2 so it was a mystery why Ferguson should favour a more defensive formation against a side of Wigan's limitations. The system was changed at the interval and for the next 45 minutes Giggs shimmered with an elegance that no other player, not even Rooney, could match.