What is wrong with Wayne Rooney?

This season Wayne Rooney has not looked to his usual standards and is still struggling to find the net despite making 4 appearances already.

During the Sir Alex Ferguson era, United could always count on Rooney to make goals out of anything. Rooney arguably played at his best for United when he was alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, the partnership between them was phenomenal and a joy to watch every weekend. Ronaldo would run through teams and then lay the ball off to Rooney who put away almost every chance he got. However after Ronaldo left United for Real Madrid, questions were asked whether the English forward could perform without the help of Ronaldo and he answered his critics in phenomenal style by, in his first year without Ronaldo, managing to score 34 goals in 44 appearances. 

Rooney went on to score a total of 100 goals in all competitions without Ronaldo until Sir Alex Ferguson retired at the end of the 2012-13 season. This proved to everyone the Rooney could perform as a solo striker and that United could rely on him to make a goal out of nothing, just like he did against Manchester City, therefore now he's playing up front on his again, this can't be the reason he is playing so poor. Van Gaal has United playing a 4-2-3-1 formation at this point in time with Rooney leading the line up front however against Aston Villa, the clinical finisher only managed to have one touch in the opposition area and that came in the 90th minute of the game.

 For a striker as good as Wayne Rooney and for the quality of players he has supplying the ball to him, there is no reason why he shouldn't be threatening the opposition consistently throughout the game. Yesterday against Newcastle, Van Gaal brought on Javier Hernandez and pushed Rooney back into the number 10 role that he's had success playing in before, especially when playing alongside Robin Van Persie. Maybe that's the problem for Rooney, maybe he has become accustomed to playing as the number 10 so when his new manager has been playing him up front on his own, Rooney has struggled as he is now the main focus point for the centre backs that he is playing against. This is bad for the Englishman as he is most effective when he manages to get into little pockets of space in which he can take his time to fire a shot on goal or pick out a runner and spread the play to them. In my opinion Van Gaal needs to change his attacking four so that he has Depay at LAM, Rooney at CAM, Mata at RAM and he needs to try playing Hernandez at ST. I think that this will help Rooney as Hernandez and Depay will make runs in behind the defence which will allow space for Rooney to take more time on the ball and if Van Gaal does this then hopefully Wayne Rooney will rediscover his goalscoring form. Hopefully this happens soon for him as he will play a pivotal part in how successful Manchester United are this season and when he's on form, Wayne Rooney is a joy to watch.