Manchester United are not playing to Wayne Rooney's strengths, says Danny Higginbotham

INSIDE FOOTBALL: Louis van Gaal must learn to use his strikers’ strengths as ruthlessly as Manuel Pellegrini does

Manchester United captain Wayne Rooney

For a team who sit fourth in the Premier League, Manchester United are carrying one hell of a lot of negative headlines around with them, with their collective lack of goals and Wayne Rooney’s struggle to score dominating their story, week after week.

As we prepare for the last round of games before another international break I wanted to compare the way the two Manchester teams use their strikers and try to get to the bottom of why Rooney is getting so much stick. Also, why United have managed 11 Premier League goals fewer than City so far, with just two goals in their last five matches.

I’m using average position statistics which, if you are not already familiar with them, chart the places players take up during matches. I find them an excellent way of establishing whether the evidence of what we think we’re seeing with our own eyes in a game is actually accurate. We’re looking at the average positions of Rooney and Anthony Martial, for United, compared with Sergio Aguero and Wilfried Bony for City in games this season.

Rooney suffered a torrid time in the recent Manchester derby (Getty Images)

There are two key ways in which a centre-forward can be deployed by a manager. One – the desired strategy for a fast striker who springs into action and plays off the shoulder of a defender, like Martial or Aguero – is to have that player working up at the front of the forward line, with the other attacking players in behind them.

Martial and Aguero are fast and dangerous. Defenders will drop back against such a player, to give themselves the extra yard they need to deal with his pace. That creates pockets of space in front of the defence for the others to work in.

A) Manchester City's average positions in their 6-1 win against Newcastle United (Opta)

Our first Opta graphic (A) shows the way Manchester City used No 10 Aguero to such incredibly good effect in this way against Newcastle United, when he scored five times – a pattern always reflected when he plays. Aguero is always the furthest forward and the other attacking players are always behind him, in average position terms.

B) Manchester United's average positions in their 3-0 win against Sunderland (Opta)

Our second graphic (B) shows how United sometimes get it right – and I mean sometimes – when they use No 9 Martial as the spear of their attack. It charts the positions United took up in the 3-0 win against Sunderland.

Sure enough, Martial is the furthest forward, creating space in front of the defence for Rooney and Juan Mata, who both scored. Martial, like Aguero, puts concern into the head of a centre-half who wants to drop and protect himself against the nightmare scenario of being forced to turn around and face a foot race against him. Meanwhile, a Mata, Rooney, Memphis Depay or Jesse Lingard profits from the extra space created. Bingo!

That brings us to the second way a centre-forward can be deployed by a manager. That forward is not necessarily the fastest in the world but he is very effective dropping a little deeper to collect and work with ball, often with back to goal. Against a danger of that kind, you, as a central defender, have a problem.

Bony celebrates his goal against Crystal Palace in the Capital One Cup (Getty Images)

Do you give yourself that same extra yard of space, allowing the forward to turn? Or do you press up and deny him that space, thus allowing others to get behind you on the outside? You have to push up against Rooney because he has sublime vision and touch, and the same goes for Bony because he will cause you problems too.

C) Manchester City's average positions in their 5-1 win over Bournemouth (Opta)

What you expect to see from charts with these two players leading the attack is the other forwards’ average positions to be well ahead of them, capitalising on the space the Rooney/Bony spear creates behind the defence. The “space in behind” as we call it.

D) Manchester United's average positions in their 0-0 draw against Crystal Palace (Opta)

Sure enough, it’s working that way with Bony. The No 14 is the deepest of the four attacking players in graphic C, City’s 5-1 win over Bournemouth. But when we look at the average positions, in graphic D, for one of the many games when Louis van Gaal deployed Rooney at the top of the attack – against Crystal Palace last week – we get to the root of the problem.

Instead of the other forwards being ahead of Rooney as we would expect, we find all four of them are in a line. I can tell you, when all four are in a line, you are very happy as defenders. It makes it far easier to defend against.

E) Manchester United's average positions in their 1-1 draw away at CSKA Moscow (Opta)

Thanks to Opta’s work, we see the same story when Rooney was centre-forward away to CSKA Moscow and at home to Manchester City. Players are not being told to race ahead of Rooney, seizing on the space behind he creates.

F) Manchester United's average positions in their 0-0 draw with Manchester City (Opta)

For all his talk about the value of possession as a way of killing other teams, Louis van Gaal is failing to play to the strengths of United’s captain, by failing to use him in the way that it seems Manuel Pellegrini would, based on the Bony chart.

I do think some perspective is needed before we start saying that United should be playing the Sir Alex Ferguson way. Sir Alex – a legend whose wisdom I was privileged to receive in my development years with United – had an abundance of natural wingers. Ryan Giggs, Lee Sharp, Andrei Kanchelskis: brilliant players. There are just not that many natural wingers in the modern game, though. You can’t create a style of play when the players are not there. The past is the past.

But where City are stealing a march on United is in appreciating the natural talents of their strikers and how best to use them. It won’t take a piece of rocket science to put that right.