On form: Wayne Rooney has started the season superbly for club and country

Rooney the great

Football 's greatest players have been goalscoring strikers who are also capable of dropping away from the central defenders to dictate the rhythm of the game.

Pele, Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff all fell into this category and Lionel Messi is the finest current exponent of the art.

Rooney is England's great and Capello must find a way to maximise his quality by giving him the freedom to drop deep and dictate play.

In Bulgaria, the England boss played Ashley Young in the hole as a second striker, with some success.

The Manchester United pair have good chemistry. This might be where Steven Gerrard, two weeks from fitness, comes into the equation when he returns.

Capello could also adopt the Barcelona method, pushing two wide strikers (Theo Walcott and Young) high to keep the full backs occupied and encouraging Rooney to play as a Messi-like false centre forward, luring centre halves out of position with his movement and creating gaps in the back four.

Farewell to 4-4-2?

Former England captain Terry Butcher is urging Capello to pair Rooney with Andy Carroll against the Welsh.

It would be a traditional British approach to an old-fashioned Home International, but Capello has distanced himself from the formation he relied upon throughout the World Cup campaign.

He has not played this way since Peter Crouch and Rooney started against Montenegro last October.

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