The first rule of Kitchen Fight Club is: you do not talk about Kitchen Fight Club. The second rule is: you do not share clips of Kitchen Fight Club in any way. And, so, the Wayne Rooney Kitchen Fight Club has probably died a bit of a death.
The Manchester United captain had been embarrassed on the morning of this tussle for a top-four place by the Sun on Sunday’s splash about his impromptu sparring session on 22 February at his Cheshire home with Phil Bardsley, his friend and former Old Trafford team-mate.
The full-back, who is now at Stoke City, looked much the better boxer and, as the pair mucked about, he laid out Rooney with a left cross. When Rooney went down, he narrowly missed catching his head and, had he done so, it is a fair bet that nobody would have been laughing about it.
As it was, Rooney’s pride was the main thing bruised. The scouser is from fighting stock, he loves the sport and this showed his technique in a dim light. The striker would also have been hurt at how the footage was leaked. Clearly, it was shared by one person too many. A thought for Bardsley, too. In May 2013, when he was at Sunderland, he was pictured lying on his back in a casino, covered in bank notes.
The stage was set for Rooney, and United, to deliver a few knockout punches and how they obliged – down to the detail of what happened when Rooney made the points safe after only 33 minutes.
Following a loose pass from Nabil Bentaleb, which had Mauricio Pochettino, the Tottenham Hotspur manager, turning on his heels in fury, Rooney ran through Eric Dier’s non‑challenge and shot past Hugo Lloris. Cue the celebration. Rooney threw four punches in quick succession, shadow-boxing, before falling back onto the canvas of the Old Trafford turf.
United needed this. Louis van Gaal needed this. It was as if the manager had found the magic touch that has been missing for swathes of the season and, most recently, in the FA Cup quarter-final defeat here against Arsenal.
The club have not taken too many scalps this season, with the only two results of real distinction being the away win at Arsenal and the home win over Liverpool. And, on both occasions, it is fair to say that the scorelines might have gone the other way.
Van Gaal got both result and performance against a Tottenham team that made a mockery of the general sense of progress and encouragement that has tracked them of late. They were torn to pieces in the first half and their Champions League ambitions have been left to hang by a thread. United, by contrast, have the spark that they need for the run-in and the difficult sequence of fixtures that looms. Next Sunday, it is Liverpool at Anfield.
United had the bit between their teeth from the first minute and the home crowd could revel in the sight of Marouane Fellaini celebrating the early breakthrough with a flurry of air punches of his own. The Belgian threw them as if he meant them. It is good to let off steam, sometimes. Rooney was the first United player over to congratulate him. He was not caught by a stray left-hander.
Michael Carrick’s poise was a welcome feature of the afternoon and his slide-rule pass had asked Fellaini to advance and put his left foot through the ball. Against Arsenal last Monday, Fellaini passed up a similar opportunity in the same area. He did not this time.
The first half came to resemble an ordeal for Tottenham, and it was easy to see why they have conceded more goals than any other team in the top half of the Premier League table. Pochettino hauled off the right-winger, Andros Townsend, on the half-hour, with United making inroads up his flank through Daley Blind and Ashley Young almost at will, and he desperately tried to shore things up. Mousa Dembélé came on at No10; Nacer Chadli switched to the right.
But United were in the mood, and better teams than Tottenham might have struggled to live with them. Chris Smalling stepped impressively out of defence with the ball at his feet (his distribution remained erratic); Juan Mata’s touch was lovely and Fellaini simply bullied anybody in his path – including Dier on the second goal, which was headed home by Carrick. “Attack, attack, attack,” bellowed the United crowd and, this time, it was not by way of exhortation. For United, things finally felt right.
