I think Rooney's form in the last few games have been exaggerated. He scored a great consolation goal against City, but overall he was just the best of a bad bunch. Against Sunderland he was horrendous until the last 20 minutes. That's ignoring the fact that he's a striker playing in the "playmaker" position. He offers little penetration through the center, he lays the ball off to the wingers, perpetuating our stupid pattern of inaccurate cross after inaccurate desperate cross.
He's a great player at his best, but it wouldn't hurt to give Kagawa a run and see how he operates. If he flunks the chance, fine, give the position back to Rooney. I mean, Rooney has been our best attacking player this season, yet we didn't score a goal from open play for how many games? Something's not adding up.
I think that is one area where perhaps Kagawa, or a player of his type could offer is something.
If Rooney does want a more attacking role then I think that could cause issues later down the line, I just don't think you can play with two strikers against the best teams, particularly us currently where we don't have that solidity in the middle. If he is happy to drop deeper though then you'd have to say right now he deserves his spot over Kagawa.
That said whilst Rooney is a better player in general and offers us more goals, someone who will more naturally play a deeper role might make the team better. Defensively someone like Kagawa won't work as hard as Rooney, but maybe they'll help us keep the ball better by taking up more deeper positions to aid the central midfielders and give them another short option.
Offensively Rooney when he is at his best is devestating but we don't see that often. I don't mean his goal threat I mean the Rooney who will pick the ball up and run at people through the middle. Normally Rooney plays that role on a half turn, angling himself to make the wide pass. I think a lot of other clubs have players in that role that will pick it up fully turn to fact the opposition, and I think that just open up more passing options.
That said Kagawa simply hasn't been forceful enough in his appearances and is too prone to let the game pass him by. So whether he's the answer there remains to be seen but I suppose unless we try it, we won't know. But then the other issue there is that he will need players making certain runs for him. For example to me he needs people like nani and januzaj who will cut inside, but there will be times where someone like Valencia is the best option wide. That's an area where maybe Kagawa needs to adapt his game, to be able to offer something when he doesn't have multiple people he can play off.
Still personally I'd like to see the 4 of rvp, rooney, nani and kagawa given a run, I really think it'd work. That said I'd also love to see RVP/Rooney with januzaj, kagawa and nani playing off them. But as much as maybe if we do let him go, we could say that we perhaps didn't give him enough opportunity to show what he can really bring, and who knows maybe Fergie had bigger plans for him, we can also say that currently Kagawa hasn't done enough to demand a spot, certainly when you contrast how Januzaj has performed in his appearances you can say there's a clear difference there.
