Berba buoyant as Wayne wanes (News Feature)

By Ben James Sep 28, 2010, 8:58 GMT

London - There has been an odd role reversal at Old Trafford this season. As last year, Manchester United are burdened by an out- of-sorts striker, and thankful their other forward is in such prime form.

It's just that this year the player out of form is Wayne Rooney, and the silver lining is Dimitar Berbatov, last year's scapegoat.

Rooney, forced into playing as an out-and-out centre forward last season by Berbatov's form, shone in the role, scoring 34 goals before a series of niggling injuries curtailed his purple patch in March.

He has never really regained form, stuttering through the World Cup - indeed, suffering such a breakdown that against Algeria he could barely trap the simplest pass - and huffing and puffing without great success for United this season.

The popular theory is that he has been unsettled by tabloid revelations about his private life, and his club manager Sir Alex Ferguson blamed the media for bringing them to light.

Former England manager Kevin Keegan, though, who was arguably the first celebrity footballer in the modern sense, winning a number of advertising and sponsorship deals in the seventies, believes Rooney has only himself to blame, having courted celebrity by selling the rights to his wedding to a magazine.

'You can't have all the contracts, you can't sell your wedding to magazines and things like this and suddenly say, 'That's the tap I want to turn on, but we want to turn the other one off',' Keegan told ESPN.

'It's just one tap and I know, from when I played, that if you are advertising boots and all these things, you have to go and make appearances. You are going to appear in the paper.

'But the one thing I would say is keep your home and your family out of it and just take your endorsements if that's what you want to do.

'You can't then turn around and say there's too much paparazzi around or there is too much publicity.'

With Ferguson likely to use a lone centre-forward against Valencia, it seems all but certain he would have selected Berbatov, whose fine form this season was highlighted by his brilliant hat- trick against Liverpool a week gone Sunday, would have taken the role, even had Rooney been fit.

As it is, Rooney has succumbed to an ankle injury and did not travel to Spain.

In the future, though, that could mean Rooney relegated to the bench, or he may end up playing on the wing again, as he frequently did when Cristiano Ronaldo was playing through the centre in his United pomp.

Back then, Rooney was praised for his selflessness and his apparent lack of ego, but having occupied a central role for over a season, it's by no means certain he'd willing revert to the position.

Rooney, in fact, has played well in two games this season: both for England, in their Euro 2012 qualifiers against Bulgaria and Switzerland.

In both he played centrally, behind a front man, which was of course the position in which he first came to prominence, and in which he shone at Euro 2004. It might be time, when the forward regains fitness, for Ferguson to consider a return to basics for Rooney. In the meantime, Berbatov is doing his best to keep the pressure off his fellow striker.