The England international returned to action in Saturday's 2-0 victory over Wigan Athletic at Old Trafford, emerging from the bench in the 56th minute to a standing ovation from the Red Devils faithful.
Rooney was unable to find the net during his stint on the field, despite the Latics being reduced to nine men shortly after his arrival, with Antolin Alcaraz and Hugo Rodallega both dismissed in a mad three-minute spell.
The 25-year-old had two chances to get on the scoresheet, but saw a powerful header tipped over by Ali Al Habsi before firing weakly at the goalkeeper after being found in space by Nani.
It has been a season of struggle on and off the field for the former Everton ace, with allegations over his private life followed by the contract saga which ended with Rooney putting pen to paper on a new five-year deal.
Ferguson said: "It was a good reception; it will be pleasing for him. It will settle him down and make him realise he is at the right club.
"It was a quiet comeback. He got involved in a few bits of the interplay. He needed 25 minutes or so.
"He will play against Rangers on Wednesday, that is the perfect game for him to come back and get 90 minutes."
Ferguson was quick to admit that United, who remain unbeaten in all competitions this season and are now level on points with Chelsea at the top of the table following the leaders' shock 1-0 defeat at Birmingham, were again not at their best.
He said: "What I'm finding is that we seem to be playing a lot of our best football in the last 20 minutes of games. We need to get more quickness in our play in the first half of matches, I thought we were a bit slow in our build-up.
"We really could have done our goal difference a power of good in the last 20 minutes. We missed a lot of chances and we could have had five or six, easily.
"But if you asked at the start of the day would we take being joint top of the league we would have said yes.
"It was not a great performance, competent and nothing more. We know ourselves that come the second half of the season we will get better."
The Scot felt the Latics were to blame for their own downfall, with skipper Alcaraz sent off by referee Martin Atkinson for two clumsy tackles, while Rodallega followed after a crude two-footed challenge on Rafael.
He said: "I thought Wigan were very aggressive, there were a lot of aggressive challenges which tested the referee throughout the game. They put themselves about there is no doubt about that.
"It was a silly challenge on Darren Fletcher (by Alcaraz), but the second one was clear, I thought the boy Rodallega was off the ground."
View the original article here
No comments:
Post a Comment