Manchester United vs CSKA Moscow match report: Wayne Rooney ends goal drought with late winner

Manchester United 1 CSKA Moscow 0: Rooney heads home to save Louis van Gaal's blushes at restess Old Trafford

(2015 Manchester United FC)

Wayne Rooney, the emblem of this Manchester United side, had been carrying the can for their failure to score. And as anxiety took a deeper hold of the night, it was Rooney who fumbled the game’s best chance.

Yet when it mattered the man around whom Louis van Gaal has shaped this faltering team left his imprint, equalling Denis Law’s record of 237 United goals to boot. The King and I, if you will. Only 12 to go to draw alongside Sir Bobby Charlton. Sometime in 2018, anybody?

Has a goal ever been so warmly received? And this after David De Gea had conjured a magical intervention to deny CSKA on the break, a goal that would have seen the Russians utterly warp an evening already skewed by the goal drought that for so long refused to end.

And so United’s first goal in 404 minutes – when Jesse Lingard volleyed Michael Carrick’s long pass back into the box for Rooney to head home – takes them to the top of Group B. Helpfully in Holland, PSV blew the group wide open with victory over Wolfsburg. Maybe the wind is changing direction after all.

The opening minutes were awash with urgency and intent. Rooney spun on a cross from Marcos Rojo shooting narrowly wide. At least it was a shot. And only four minutes gone. Two minutes later, a dodgy back pass saw Rooney sniffing out a chance but again no luck. Lingard went down heavily in the box yielding optimistic penalty claims. Any kind of optimism would do, of course.

Daley Blind reprised his World Cup stunt for Holland against Spain, picking out Mata with a raking cross-field ball. Where Robin van Persie chose the spectacular headed option to score, Mata went with the more mundane left boot and was unsuccessful. But oh the forward thrust.

The best chance of the half fell to Rojo. Beautifully picked out by Ashley Young, the Argentine had a rare, unfettered sight of goal, let fly convincingly with a left-foot volley yet still no cigar. It has to be said that the CSKA focus was stopping not initiating. They were a yellow wall of reactivity, drilled in the finer arts of getting rid. The area around the Moscow box was more packed than the trams ferrying fans to the game. It was better from United but not enough to relieve the joyless state that United have become under Van Gaal. Players complaining of a flat dressing room, fans reeling at their team’s soporific adhesion to a ball going nowhere, and former players rolling despondent eyes in television studios.

United came into this game without a celebration in five hours and 25 minutes.

Van Gaal’s solution to his attacking inertia was to start with Carrick and Bastian Schweinsteiger, excellent footballers both but not a sprint in either. Young, a winger, started at full-back. He did at least have Anthony Martial up top with Rooney.

Van Gaal asks for patience and advises that this colourless, odourless phase is a necessary part of the process. The defence is sorted, it follows therefore in the logic of Van Gaal that the attack will be next. It is a strange process that only he, it seems, believes in or understands. Paul Scholes was at his exasperated best in the pundit’s chair before the match reiterating to Gary Lineker his despair at the dull football proffered.

It is worth reminding ourselves that football is just a game, entertainment, escapism. This message was powerfully re-inforced across the public address with a message of condolence in English and Russian for the tragic victims of the downed airliner travelling from Egypt to St Petersburg.

Ironic cheers greeted Rooney when he passed the ball into the empty net 10 minutes after the restart. Martial played him in but was already offside. The longer the wait went on the greater the risk of neurosis taking hold. The idea that a goal would never come no matter what United tried came easily to mind.

The removal of Martial for Marouane Fellaini with 25 minutes to go was met with widespread boos. The quickest player in red removed for the slowest. To be fair to Fellaini, he featured in the most fluent performances under Van Gaal last season that brought wins against Liverpool and Manchester City.

At that point, the benefit of the doubt was a luxury afforded Van Gaal. There is little of that now. This is manifestly the Dutchman’s project. The fans were behind the team last night, but it is hard to see how much longer they might put up with Van Gaal’s template.

Mind you Van Gaal was not to blame when Rooney fell over his own feet when easier to score after great work from Mata. For too long, it was the story of the night.