Manchester United vs. West Ham: Rooney Gets the Goals, Berbatov Gets the Respect

Thanks, Wayne Rooney, for scoring a brilliant hat trick to salvage three lost points for Manchester United at West Ham. Considering how bad he’s been for most of this season—and the first 60 minutes of the game on Saturday—this performance helps to mend some of the damage that he did when he held Manchester United for ransom.

Not all of it, but some of it.

However, his reaction to his third goal exemplified the reason that I struggle to feel the same as I used to about Wayne Rooney.

Two moments of brilliance and a clinically taken penalty to turn a game that Manchester United had done its best to lose completely on its head were immediately overshadowed by a juvenile, hostile and downright offensive outburst.

It’s not the swearing that I have a problem with—I swear like a trooper on the football pitch myself. I don’t care what he says, although I appreciate that parents of young children may feel differently.

It’s the hate that fills Wayne Rooney—the hostility which he seems to reserve for absolutely everyone who isn’t Wayne Rooney, including his own supporters—that bothers me.

He’s just such a hard man to love.

There is passion, and then there is aggression. Rooney’s celebration was so far over the line of aggression as to be almost unbelievable.

Gone is the enthusiastic, young, goal-scoring machine from Liverpool who said he loved the club and did everything in his power to prove that to the fans. Instead, we have a self-interested, self-important snarling nutcase, rich beyond his wildest dreams and completely out of touch with the fans.

He’s had a bad season both personally and professionally, but he’s started banging in goals again. This is what makes the case of Wayne Rooney so difficult for me to get my head around.

I want to love him again. I really, really do, especially after he single-handedly won the club a game that it had no right to.

I just can’t.

I don’t feel like I have anything in common with him. Not even the love for Manchester United that we all take for granted.

The differences between Rooney and the classy, cultured and understated Dimitar Berbatov are staggering. Although Rooney snatched the headlines—both good and bad—the man that turned the game was Berba.

I have never in my life seen a player so composed on the ball, so aware of his teammates and so easy on the eye. Some of the things Berba does make me laugh out loud at the screen.

As others have pointed out, the fact that all of Manchester United's goals came with him on the pitch is absolutely no coincidence.

If the rumours doing the rounds today are true—that Berba will be allowed to leave for any offer over £20 million—then I will break down and cry. I will literally fall to pieces where I am sitting.

And he wasn't the only potential departee that impressed Sunday.

Ryan Giggs was so good at left back that, having missed the first minute of the second half to check the cricket score, I didn’t at first realise that Patrice Evra had gone off and Giggs had filled in.

Giggs was up and down the flank, acting as an attacking outlet and fulfilling his defensive responsibilities. It was yet another top-class performance from a player that I am going to miss so, so much when he is gone.

Arsenal are bottlers, pure and simple. Chelsea have now dropped one point too many and nobody else is even in the hunt.

It’s a little premature to claim No. 19, because it could still all go horribly wrong, but this weekend’s results couldn't be any better for Manchester United.

Bring on Chelsea. Surely it’s time to beat them again.