Louis van Gaal believes Wayne Rooney can still score 25 times for Manchester United this season despite the captain nearing 1,000 minutes since his last Premier League goal.
Rooney has found the net four times for the club this season, though these have been in the Champions League and Capital One Cup. During the club’s summer tour of the US, Van Gaal stated Rooney would return at least 25 goals for the campaign because the 29-year-old was being restored to centre-forward.
Asked if he believed Rooney could still reach the mark, the manager said: “He has already scored four goals.” When it was put to the Dutchman that his captain has played 954 minutes in the league since he scored against Aston Villa on 4 April, Van Gaal said: “I don’t think that is an issue for him, for me or for the club, so he shall score also in the Premier League. That I am convinced of. And you shall see it.”
Rooney has also scored twice for England this season and Van Gaal is unsure why the league drought is so long. “As a player and as a manager you can never know,” he said. “Also he has been a little bit unlucky. I can give you an example – against Newcastle he scored and it was not offside but it was cancelled. You cannot manage the referee. The referee is independent.”
Despite the pre-season decision to move Rooney into the No9 position the manager hinted he may revert the Liverpudlian to a No10 berth because of Anthony Martial’s emergence.
The 19-year-old has scored four times in his first four appearances. “I think that Wayne can play a lot of positions,” Van Gaal said. “He has shown that last season. I want to play with a first striker and second striker and maybe they are a very good duo together. We shall wait and see. He is a striker for me, and maybe I shall use him behind Martial, but when he plays with [Marouane] Fellaini, he shall always play in front of Fellaini because I want a striker who is running in behind. That’s also why I want to keep [James] Wilson until December [before a potential loan] maybe because he is also a typical striker running in behind.”
If Martial features against Sunderland at Old Trafford on Saturday and scores he will become the first United player to find the net in his opening three Premier League appearances. His arrival can also help Rooney. “Of course, I don’t say that’s why we bought Martial, but we bought a type like that because in our philosophy that’s very important,” said Van Gaal. “I have been saying for many, many press conferences that I want speed, I want creativity and that’s why we bought Memphis [Depay] and that’s why we bought Martial also.”
Van Gaal coached Ajax to the 1995 Champions League trophy and the Dutch side contained many young players, including Patrick Kluivert and Edgar Davids.
Of whether the 64-year-old has the same ambition for Martial, Depay, Andreas Pereira and United’s other emerging talents, he said: “You can compare players with each other. But this is another generation. At that time Kluivert and Davids were not with iPhones, for example. Now all the time we have iPhones in our hands. This is a different period and also the intensity nowadays is more. I think in the Premier League it is much more.”
There are, though, similarities between Martial and Kluivert. “Of course you can compare Martial with Kluivert,” said Van Gaal. “You can do that. Because Kluivert was also a fantastic, athletic figure and scored goals right from the beginning. But you can’t compare the periods or the resistance in the game.”
