ANDY COLE EXCLUSIVE: Wayne Rooney’s delighted he’s passed my all-time goals record

Andy Cole talks goals and how he personally congratulated Wayne Rooney personally after the Manchester United striker passed his career goals tally.

I was at Old Trafford on Saturday when Wayne Rooney scored a great back-heeled goal to put United ahead.

It wasn’t only a quality finish which ended an eight game run without a win, but it meant that he moved ahead of me to go second in Premier League’s all-time top scorer chart with 188 goals behind Alan Shearer.

People were quick to remind me and my phone started buzzing with Twitter notifications.

I was pleased for United and for Wayne and went to Carrington this week to see him and congratulate him. “Delighted I got past you, I waited a long time,” said Wayne. Given it was his first goal since October, he wasn’t wrong.

Before I talk about that, I’m not going to pretend that football was invented with the Premier League in 1992.

There were some superb strikers who scored more than me, like Ian Rush for Liverpool, who had a phenomenal record and was superb at chasing down opponents. He worked as hard off the ball as when he got on it, and his partnership with Kenny Dalglish was the best in England in the 80s.

But let’s deal with my Premier League goals. I’m supposed to be all nonchalant, but it’s actually something I’m very proud of, increasingly so after retiring when you tend to be reflective.

There are several reasons for this: one is that only one of my goals was a penalty. That was for Fulham at Birmingham and I took that because nobody else wanted to. The rest came from open play.

I always said – and this maybe taken as arrogant – that if I’m going to score goals then I want to score proper goals. I said it half in jest, but at all the clubs I signed for apart from Manchester United who had Eric Cantona as a penalty taker, the managers assumed that I wanted to take penalties.

They were surprised when I said no. Had I taken penalties, I could have added maybe six more goals per season, but I have no regrets.

I’m pleased for Wayne, pleased that my goals tally took so long for a legend of English football to surpass. He’s a player recognised around the world, while I was lucky to score a single goal according to some of the comments I read on Twitter!

Maybe they’re right and my whole career was based on luck – a great deal of it to fluke 187 goals!

I hope Wayne scores a lot more, but he had a tough 2015. I don’t think playing in the role of a traditional number nine – the focal point up front - helps him.

There’s so little creativity in the current Manchester United side that anyone would struggle to score goals, even the great players United are often linked with.

I used to get three or four chances a game at Old Trafford. Now, strikers at Man United are lucky if they get one chance to snatch at and the 2-1 win against Swansea was the first time in a year that two of United’s strikers have been on the score sheet.

A modern striker in Wayne’s position has to run in behind defenders and you need pace to do that. Wayne could do that when he was younger, but he’s 30 and his game needs to be adapted and managed accordingly.

I still think he’s got plenty of football in him, which is remarkable given how many games he’s already played, but he can’t do it all alone for a United team which has struggled badly.

One problem is that United don’t have a player who runs in behind to open up the game, to push the opposing back four back a bit so that you can start playing short passes in front of them and opening spaces.

Teams come to Old Trafford and find it comfortable playing against United because of the way United play in front of them.

Chelsea caused United problems without a centre forward. Even Swansea, who are among the lowest scorers, caused problems.

United struggle to close games out and panic when they’re leading. They were still conceding chances to Swansea in a nervous last few minutes, when their goalkeeper moved forward to try and score.

Smaller teams like Swansea would have come to Old Trafford a few years ago and thought: ‘If we get beat by three we would have done well’. Now they’re thinking: ‘We can win this’.

United’s limitations haven’t changed, but I hope the goal lifts Wayne’s confidence and he starts getting back to playing like he can play.

It will be hard, but I noticed that the United’s system was changed for the last couple of matches and tweaked slightly, while Louis van Gaal made reference to the greater risks that had been taken by his team playing further forward.

United fans have always wanted to see attacking football. Wayne still has a place in that attack, but it needs to score a lot more goals than it has so far.