Man Utd must drop ‘awful’ Rooney, says Paul Parker

Former Manchester United defender Paul Parker says Wayne Rooney should be dropped, claiming his performances have been “awful” so far this season.

The England international has just one goal for United tso far this season with the Red Devils yet to win a competitive game, having lost once and drawn twice in the Premier League and been knocked out of the League Cup by MK Dons.

Rooney - named club captain by Van Gaal this summer - will now face competition for his place from new signing Radamel Falcao, who arrived on loan from Monaco on deadline day, and Parker says Rooney does not deserve to start.

“Wayne Rooney has been awful. There he was at Burnley this weekend, supposedly captaining the team - but I saw a player interested only in himself, doing nothing to try and lift his game or inspire his team-mates,” he wrote in his Yahoo! Sport blog.

“The only thing in any way remarkable about his performance is that he collects €375,000 a week to play that badly.

“Once Van Persie is fully-fit again, Rooney must be the person to be dropped from United's new attacking line-up: for me, it'll be RVP and Falcao every time.

“And though there's lots of talk about him playing in the hole behind that front two, I think that'd be a huge mistake - why would you have Rooney there when Juan Mata or Angel Di Maria would do the job so much better?”

Parker also insists that Van Gaal would not be afraid to drop Rooney, despite having made him club captain, following his appointment as manager at Old Trafford.

“That'll leave Van Gaal with a big call to make: dropping Wayne Rooney,” he added.

“He's always shown in his career that he's not afraid of the big decisions; he showed it most recently with his goalkeeper substitution for the shoot-out at the World Cup, and he'll have to show it once again because the way things are looking there will be no place for Rooney in that starting line-up soon.”