18th September, 2013
Moyes also reserved praise for Marouane Fellaini, who has followed him to United from Everton and who produced an assured performance on his full debut before going off in the second half.
“I thought he played well tonight,” Moyes said. “He settled in well. He started to get a little bit of cramp mid-way through the second half so I thought I wouldn’t take any chances with him. But he did a good job.”
After Rooney put United ahead with a 22nd-minute volley, Simon Rolfes equalised with a deflected shot nine minutes into the second half.
However, an acrobatic Robin van Persie volley restored United’s lead five minutes later and further goals from Rooney and Valencia made it 4-1, before Omer Toprak claimed a consolation with two minutes to play. Leverkusen coach Sami Hyypia, the former Liverpool centre-back, admitted that his side had struggled to get to grips with the effervescent Rooney.
“He’s done it for years already and I think he still has a few years left,” said Hyypia, who came up against Rooney on a number of occasions during his 10-year Anfield career. “To score 200 goals is a good achievement. It’s a few more than I scored in my career. “He’s still scoring goals and I think he’ll score goals for a few years more. It looks so easy, how he’s playing.”
United’s opening goal was contentious, with Valencia appearing to stray into an offside position as Rooney dispatched his shot, but Hyypia refused to criticise Slovenian referee Damir Skomina. “The first goal is always important in football, but I haven’t seen it on TV so I can’t comment too much,” he said.
“I heard it might have been offside, but those are things you can’t control and after the game, there’s no use talking about them. We need to analyse what we could have done better tonight and try to work on them on the training pitch and do those things better next time.”