The writing was on the wall for Wayne Rooney midweek at Northampton Town. At least in the short term anyway. With Jose Mourinho already showing (and saying) that his midweek games were his opportunity to play the reserves, Rooney was named to start at Sixfields Stadium in front of a packed crowd of almost 8000 people and alongside the likes of Memphis Depay, Ashley Young, Sergio Romero and Marcos Rojo. That in itself wasn’t so telling, except that on a night where Wayne missed a clear chance early on and had another ruled out for offside, he played the entire 90 minutes against the League Two side. Rumours were already swirling that he wasn’t gonna start against Leicester on the weekend, this was pretty much confirmation of that.

And so it proved. Rooney was named on the bench against the champions and without him Manchester United had their best performance of the season. Juan Mata was magnificent in Rooney’s number 10 position and Paul Pogba and Andre Herrera formed a wonderful first time combination in the middle. Slick passes, purposeful movement, clear chances and defensive organisation. They were 4-0 up by halftime when Claudio Ranieri bit the bullet and took off Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez to save them for their Champions League game a few days following – as Mourinho noticeably didn’t do for Rooney in the EFL Cup.

The calls to drop Wayne Rooney have been loud and, look, I’ll admit that I’m a Rooney defender myself but after his genuinely pathetic performance in the second half against Watford something clearly had to give. And it did. And the result was emphatic. And now conclusions are being jumped to quicker than a young Wayne Rooney on the volley.

Wayne Rooney hasn’t been himself for the last couple of seasons. Most Man United slump things you can trace back to the very day that Sir Alex Ferguson retired but Rooney didn’t play in Fergie’s final game – he sat and watched from a corporate box having taken time off for the birth of his second son – and he actually played quite well under David Moyes, one of a select bunch, scoring 17 of their 64 league goals (in 29 games). Rooney has always had a loud chorus of critics but his own personal performances didn’t really enter slump territory until Louis Van Gaal took over.

In fact there might not have been a player more affected by LVG’s Philosophy (make sure to read that in the tune of Hakuna Matata) than poor old Wazza. There was that story about how Van Gaal wanted his players to take a touch before they shot, which is in complete contrast to the spontaneous player that Rooney has always been. The more he stops to think about what he’s doing, the lumpier his first touch gets (which is one argument against his flirtations with central midfield). In 61 Premier League games under Van Gaal, Rooney scored 20 goals – only 8 of them last season which is his smallest PL return since he was a 16 year old bursting onto the scene for Everton back in 2002-03.

This goal here is telling of all that. Opening game last season, United won 1-0 and were lucky to do so as Rooney’s second-guessing in not just smacking it first time costs him only for the ball to end up in the net anyway off of Kyle Walker.

Probably consistent with being a doer and not a thinker on the park, Rooney has always had stretches of pure inspiration and absolute drought. When he’s struggling, it’s been the same things every time that get highlighted: too slow, too laboured, a heavy first touch and a heavy work-rate that isn’t accomplishing anything. Naturally, nothing has changed this time around – except that at 30 years old now he’s passed that threshold where a turn in form, for some reason, becomes indistinguishable from end-of-career decay. As in, he’s old now so this isn’t a temporary struggle, this is just how good he really is now.

That’s dumb. Yeah he’s got a lot of miles in those legs, but 30 is still way too young for a top class player without serious injury history and access to world class health and fitness coaches to have hit the wall. Rooney’s always had trouble getting out of his ruts. He’s buggered as soon as he starts getting self-conscious about his game… which given his prominence is something he’s forced to do way more than he should.

Wayne Rooney: “I think I’ve had that my whole career—a little bit more of late, I think, but that’s football. I listen to my coaches and my team-mates, the people around me, and I don’t really listen to what a lot of people out there are saying because a lot of it is rubbish.”

Jose Mourinho always has a lot to say and this instance has been no different. Having thrown several players under the bus already this season, he was quick to jump to Rooney’s defence having dropped him against Leicester. First he pointed out why: he wanted pace across the park to cover for the Foxes’ legendary counter attack. Then he went for the firm reassurance quote:

"He's my man, I trust him completely. He's as happy as I am at this moment and that's the team. He's a big player for me, for United, a big player for this country."

All fair enough, too. Rooney is a player in a team and the manager who picks that team has every right to pick whoever he wants. If Rooney was to pack a sad for missing one single game then that’d be the real drama.

Mourinho is gonna get the usual praise for having the guts to drop Rooney here, especially given the results, but it isn’t that simple. Van Gaal left him out last Boxing Day and the team lost 2-0 at Stoke. He was subbed on at half-time, both goals already scored. That was the second and this game was the third time that Rooney has begun a Premier League game from the bench in the last four seasons. As his production declined under LVG, what was interesting is that his place in the team was actually reinforced and stronger than ever. All through his time under Fergie there were controversial selections, from playing out wide with Ronaldo in the middle to that famous Champions League match against Real Madrid where Danny Welbeck was picked to hassle Xabi Alonso in Rooney’s exact position and led Wayne to file a transfer request. Which evolved into a rich new contract, so make of that what you will. Fergie never saw him as indispensable though. He never saw any player that way.

Neither does Mourinho, so nobody should have ever doubted that he’d drop him if he felt the team would benefit. But Moyes and Van Gaal wouldn’t have hesitated too long either, the difference is that they didn’t really have any other options. Robin van Persie also offered diminishing returns to where Van Gaal flipped him out for next to nothing and the Dutchman also got rid of Javier Hernandez and Danny Welbeck. They didn’t have too many other options. I mean, Radamel Falcao, anyone? And as for Marcus Rashford, he only got his chance with Rooney out injured. When he came back two months later, Rashford was undroppable and Rooney settled into that midfield role.

Over the course of his Old Trafford career, Rooney has worn a few different hats. He’s played as a second striker, he’s played as a leading striker, he’s played as a wide midfielder, as a number ten and, yes, in the midfield. Jose Mourinho said that under him he would only ever be a “nine or a ten” and he said that as the paperwork was being finalised on Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s transfer to join Zlatan Ibrahimovic at MUFC. Why is Rooney suddenly droppable under Mourinho? Because he has other options.

Problem for Wayne now is that those other options might be better than him. He’s not getting in at centre-mid or on the wing in this side. He’s closed a few games on the wing for tactical reasons but Mourinho isn’t about to start him there when he’s been so fixated with pace on the flanks recently. Rooney can still boss a game from the top except that Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Marcus Rashford are so damn good.

As for the one the Einsteins call his ‘best position’, the number ten role? Well, Juan Mata was simply superb against Leicester, moving the ball around quickly with a series of short passes and clever movement and that allowed him to hold his spot higher up the park whereas Rooney famously drops deep to find the space to unleash his gorgeous switches to the overlapping fullback. That can leave the striker, obviously Zlatan, isolated. In defeats to Man City and Watford, Rooney completed only four total passes to Ibra while Mata made eight of them in one game vs Leicester. Of course, there’s cause and effect all over the place and while some are saying that Mata’s positioning allowed Paul Pogba to flourish, you could just as easily say that the Pog was unleashed by having Ander Herrera alongside him rather than Marouane Fellaini. I am one of those people.

That touches on an the main point of all this stuff. Michael Carrick was asked about his lack of opportunities so far after the Northampton game and he said there was no reason to change his game – everyone has periods in and out of the team, nothing major. Except for Wayne Rooney apparently, because when he starts a game on the bench it’s seen as a huge statement and a massive insult.

Nope. Get out.

See, this is a big squad. There is competition for every place (except goalkeeper, no offence to Sergio Romero) and for every Fellaini that gets a run there’s an Ander Herrera, a Michael Carrick and a Morgan Schneiderlin all begging for a chance. Not to mention Bastian Schweinsteiger, wherever the hell he is these days. Fellaini starts a few games and the team keeps winning, he holds that place. They lose a few and in comes Herrera. Rooney may be club captain and that’s worth plenty but it shouldn’t be worth a guaranteed place. Mata himself has been stuck trying to fit into this team for ages now, long since paying his dues.

If this is reading like yet another ‘Rooney Cannot Start!’ piece, here’s my point of difference: there’s no reason why he can’t play his way back into the team. In fact not having a wake-up call like this in a while has probably been detrimental anyway – not to mention the cause of this whole narrative because if he’d been rotated a bit more often the last couple seasons then people wouldn’t have come to feel he was untouchable and gotten so outraged at the thought, further putting him under the spotlight. Rooney now needs to accept the situation he’s in and be there when needed. What few people have admitted so far is how classily he’s handled it all to date.

Chris Smalling: “Wayne was the same as always before the game when we're all getting ready. He is often one of the most vocal and he was the same before the Leicester match. Regardless whatever the situation is, whatever game, whether he is on the bench or playing or whatever, he is always that same type of character and that's why he is England's main man and our main man.”

Inspirational stuff. Important too because he has a responsibility as captain to put the team’s interests first and right now they might not include him – at least not in the capacity he’s used to. But, like, that’s football. It ain’t some scandal to be named on the bench now and again. It’s a long, long season and (unless his agent starts taking personal shots at Jose) all it’ll take is a single injury and everything changes.

So what’s to be done about him? Nothing. Nothing needs to be done. He’s finally being treated like a regular footballer in a competitive team, that’s all.