Wayne Rooney and Manchester United put in dire performance against Middlesbrough

Done. Finished. Over. Retired but still on the pitch. Never coming back. A waste of a contract and a man who should be playing MLS, if they'd stoop to him. The Guardian has a match report summing up Wayne Rooney's appalling performance, which was matched by a few others against Middlesbrough last night.

On ESPNFC, there are quotes from Louis van Gaal where he says he is worried about United's inability to score. Well, quite, which might suggest that he needs to be the man to improve things, and stop this ludicrously boring and tedious one-note approach to football. As if that's going to happen.

In the Daily Mail, Jamie Carragher has seen the exit from the cup as an advantage for Manchester United and Arsenal. It gives them fewer games to play. That might just about work, but the Champions League games are needed in order to keep standards higher than they were last season, and the FA Cup is now the only chance to play youngsters without it being too much of a risk. Really, United should have invested in a decent striker last year, and a defender, and the games would have been easier won and easier managed.

And for Yahoo, I asked whether it is worth keeping Van Gaal on any longer.