Manchester United: Wayne Rooney Leading Alex Ferguson's Side to New Levels

Anything the noisy neighbours can do Manchester United are clearly determined to do better. City got five at Tottenham, so a couple of hours later, Sir Alex Ferguson’s sensations went out and scored eight against the other club from North London.

It's going to get manic in Manchester, because we are witnessing the start of the greatest rivalry ever between the two clubs as one bids to out-do the other at every turn.

This is United determined to prove that, no matter how much City’s mega-wealthy owners spend and no matter how many superstars they bring in, they have no intention of giving up the local bragging rights.

Arsenal, admittedly, were a shell of their former selves. Once upon a time, it was Arsene Wenger and his team handing out football lessons to all and sundry. Now they can only bow down and admit that their days as the academics of English football are well and truly over. The departure of Cesc Fabregas, especially, is a sign of the times, and Wenger faces a battle for credibility that few would have believed would have been possible even a year ago—even allowing for how badly hit his side was due to injury at Old Trafford.

For the second time in a week, Ferguson’s young team played a brand of football so breathless and brilliant that few teams—and maybe even the great Barcelona themselves—could have lived wit, far less a team that simply surrendered as Wenger’s did.

The central figure of United’s fabulous start to the season is Wayne Rooney, whose game is now taking on a new dimension.

Just twelve months ago Rooney was not a happy camper. He felt underpaid and believed United were not investing in the kind of quality that would keep the side at the top. A transfer request followed before his club recognised the true value of him and handed him a £200,000-per-week new deal.

United’s hierarchy are now not only getting value for money, on this form they are getting Rooney on the cheap.

Thanks to the pace and exhuberance of Danny Welbeck—who limped out of the game after scoring with a hamstring injury—to the invention of Ashley Young, to the powerful contribution of another new signing in Phil Jones and to the pace and one-touch passing that personifies Ferguson’s team, Rooney is fast becoming an even better player.

That team is on his wave length now, and he is loving the opportunity to finally be able to fully express himself as an attacker, having oft been used by his manager in the past as flank cover.

There are others in the United team who are performing brilliantly, but Rooney is the fulcrum and the least he deserved against Arsenal was a hat-trick.

The summer began with United’s pursuit of Wesley Sneijder and the belief—one certainly expressed  by this observer, but also by many, many more—that unless the Inter Milan midfielder was captured, then the pursuit of Barcelona would remain a vain one. Based on the evidence of the last two games, United don’t need him. Tom Cleverley is blossoming, Anderson is finally accepting responsibility and showing his true skill-witness his pass for Welbeck’s goal, and Ferguson has plenty in reserve within his squad.

Young looks a steal at around £16M, Jones is a man mountain for the same money while Chris Smalling is becoming a revelation at right back—and still there are Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand, Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher, amongst others, waiting to return or compete.

Above them all, however, is Rooney. This season may become his moment—a time when he truly becomes of the great figures of global soccer.

Who needs Sneijder now? Not United—or, at least, not with Rooney so imperious as part of a team that is en route to breaking new boundaries.