Manchester United: Successive Draws Simply Underline Wayne Rooney's Importance

Sometimes you really don’t know what you’ve got until its gone. Amidst the furor surrounding Manchester United’s blistering start to the 2011/12 season, Wayne Rooney’s contribution, while lauded, was sometimes underplayed in servitude of the general excellence of the team as a collective.

Rooney is the fulcrum of this United side, the catalyst upon which the team pivots. Rooney is invaluable to Manchester United.

A 1-1 draw with Stoke City was perhaps a result United fans would begrudgingly take from the WWF arena of English football. Yet the 3-3 a draw at home to the Swiss minnows Basle is a result that can neither be accepted nor, more accurately, justified.

In both instances, on the balance of play, United deserved no more than what they got, particularly against Basle, where they were perhaps, dare we say it, lucky.

The performances in both matches were like night and day compared to the palpable confidence exuded by the eleven men in red during the first five matches of the season. The difference? No Rooney, and to a lesser extent his partner in crime Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez.

Rooney provides the link between the United midfield and attack that all the flicks and tricks of Dimitar Berbatov, movement of Hernandez and precocious youthfulness of Danny Welbeck cannot possibly bring.

Rooney is given almost a free reign by United supremo Sir Alex Ferguson. Moving effortlessly into the space vacated by backpedalling defenders. Swinging searching balls left to right on a six-pence, before accelerating into the area to finish with aplomb. If it is actually possible to be worth £200,000, he is.

In the two games this week in which Rooney’s inopportune hamstring niggle have enforced his absence, this conjoining role has appeared rather hollow, as neither Berbatov, Michael Owen or Welbeck can fill the Rooney shoes. The attacking verve and panache that was so evident in the opening few games has been diluted somewhat. Something is missing.

It may seem an unhealthy equation for a team to be so overtly reliant on one individual. Yet that is the case with all who reside among the pantheons of the world’s greatest players. Imagine Real Madrid without Cristiano Ronaldo’s 95 goals in his 96 team games; or Barcelona without the talismanic Lionel Messi’s 65 in his last 64 games. It is an equation that doesn’t quite work. A team, but not the team.

Current estimates envisage that the striker will be fit for the trip to Liverpool on October 15th, if not his country’s Euro qualifier against Montenegro on the October 7th. For fans of both club and country it cant come soon enough.