After visions of United’s past, even ‘Einsteins’ will struggle to plot Wayne Rooney’s future

Sir Alex Ferguson chuckled and applauded, a man who makes Manchester United fans nostalgic harking back to happier days himself. Robin van Persie had scored, the Dutchman’s name was being sung and United were winning 4-1. But for the fact his goal came in the yellow and blue of Fenerbahce, it might have been 2012-13 all over again.

There have been few more popular consolation goals. Van Persie was serenaded when he took a corner, when he left the pitch at half-time and upon the final whistle. On Old Trafford’s unofficial Veterans Day, Wayne Rooney, too, was treated with compassion. It was an extended exercise in showing sympathy with the footballing elderly.

United had a glimpse of the future and visions of their past. They had signs of the changing of the guard. For Van Persie, it was incidental. For Rooney, worrying. The Dutchman’s return to Old Trafford was a one-off affair, the Englishman’s restoration to the team perhaps a rarity. He is Waning Rooney, burdened by evidence of decline, stripped of some of his status.

Rooney retains his armband, but he is losing his other distinctions. Paul Pogba took Rooney’s place as a No 10 at Anfield. Anthony Martial briefly displaced him as United’s main striker last season. Within the space of four minutes, each took over his mantle as spot-kick specialist. “The first penalty taker was Paul,” Jose Mourinho confirmed. “Maybe he didn’t want to repeat [take another].” But even as Old Trafford called for Rooney to step up when Sener Ozbayrakli fouled Martial, the younger forward assumed the responsibility instead.

It was a metaphor for his sidelining. Rooney is growing accustomed to being a spectator. He felt like one on the pitch. Things happened around him, occasionally involving him, but the explosiveness, the decisiveness came from more vibrant, more dynamic figures. They all pressed their cases to start against Chelsea; he did not. Jesse Lingard scored United’s fourth goal from Rooney’s pass; Paul Pogba got the third in spectacular style when Rooney directed a pass behind Lingard and the younger man reacted well to set up the Frenchman.

Against insipid opposition, he proved a terrific box-to-box presence. This was a night when Pogba and United looked a natural fit, rather than a cause of uneasy compromises. He is a footballer whose existence is complicated by the range of his talents, both physical and technical, one with the gifts to be the complete footballer but who can look frustratingly incomplete. Yet there are few giant, quick, strong central midfielders with the ability to find the top corner from 20 yards. Penalties can elevate statistics, but screamers last longer in the memory.

After one goal in his first nine United appearances, Pogba mustered two in a quarter of an hour. “He goes from the worst player in the Premier League to a great player in 48 hours,” said Mourinho, trying to satirise the overreactions surrounding the most expensive footballer in history but inadvertently echoing it and blaming his new favourite scapegoat, “the Einsteins.”

Sarcasm was his stock response. Henrikh Mkhitaryan, the Bundesliga’s player of the year, remains rooted on one United start. He sat near the back of the directors’ box in his civvies. Others started and starred for a second-string side. “The situation is that we played with Lingard, with [Juan] Mata and Martial. I am not an Einstein. I don’t know a tactical system that can play with four wingers at the same time.”

It ignored the possibility Mkhitaryan could operate behind a centre-forward. Instead Mata excelled there, again looking United’s classiest and most creative option in the striker’s slipstream. It is no coincidence United have scored four goals twice these season and, in both games, Mata has been installed in his preferred position, displaying his incisive passing. On current form, he is United’s finest No 10.

But the No 10 shirts adorned the backs of others, remnants of the United old guard and two of the comparatively few on show who have won the Premier League. One was the captain of Louis van Gaal’s Holland, the other the skipper of his United. Van Persie led his Netherlands team to third in the World Cup, Rooney his United to fourth and fifth in the Premier League. They were slow-motion presences in attack.

Van Persie has always had a stately demeanour. Rooney was never such an elegant runner but he used to get by through sheer force. Now he chugs around in second gear. There was a moment when he tried to outpace Martin Skrtel and failed comprehensively. His touch can be decidedly mixed. Van Persie offers hints of class, possessing the loveliest of left feet which made his fall from grace the more surprising.

He got his chance to say goodbye, albeit in his joint heaviest defeat at Old Trafford since Arsenal’s 8-2 mauling in 2011. Rooney has the best part of three years left at United. Even Einstein may struggle to find a productive way of using him for much of those.