Rooney leaves growing pains behind

(CNN) -- Two goals last weekend, one midweek in the Champions League and another -- plus a starring role -- in Manchester United's 4-1 win over Middlesbrough on Saturday suggest that Wayne Rooney may finally be getting back to the sort of form that persuaded Alex Ferguson to part with $54 million in 2004.

Teenage prodigies rarely manage to deliver on their early potential and Rooney, who turned 22 last week, has been dogged by niggling injuries and poor form since emerging as one of the world's most promising young talents at Euro 2004 after bursting into the Everton and England teams before his 18th birthday.

Even last season, Rooney was a strangely peripheral figure as United swept to the title, perhaps still struggling to shake off the physical and psychological effects of a nightmarish World Cup at which he arrived late -- thrown desperately into England's quarterfinal against Portugal despite having been ruled out of the competition six weeks earlier by a broken foot -- and left early -- sent off for a characteristically indisciplined stamp on Portuguese defender Ricardo Carvalho.

It hardly helped that he was also overshadowed by the inspired form of his World Cup rival and Old Trafford teammate, Cristiano Ronaldo, another teenage talent who left Rooney looking lumpen, tired and slow beyond his years by comparison.

This season though it is Ronaldo who has been out of touch, his exertions of last season perhaps finally catching up with him.

Meanwhile Rooney has thrived in a marauding partnership with Carlos Tevez that has helped catapult United to four consecutive four-goal wins and eight straight league victories, lifting them -- after a faltering start -- to second in the English Premier League.

That has led Alex Ferguson, not a man naturally prone to hyperbole, to suggest that the pair -- who share cartoonishly ugly looks -- could become one of United's most beautiful couples.

"I hope in three or four years we will see something really special from them," said Ferguson. "Both have got great attributes. Courage, speed, ability to beat men, all those things are there.

"But it's maturity that is important. Once you see that, you see greater authority, better timing. And when that comes, I hope they'll still be at this club and people will see what special players they are."

While the signs are that Rooney is finally leaving his growing pains behind, as Ferguson admits, he undoubtedly remains a work in progress, still prone to needless argument and indiscipline and as capable of losing a game as winning it, as England's recent 2-1 defeat in Russia demonstrated.

It had been Rooney's instinctive finish which had put England ahead, seemingly setting them on course for Euro 2008. But it was also his clumsy challenge on the edge of the area that earned Russia the penalty that provided them with an easy route back into the match.

English fans remain patient of Rooney's foibles, perhaps conscious that he remains their country's closest approximation to a genuine world-class star and best hope of honors in the future.

Failing that though, Ferguson would probably settle for a continuation of Rooney's recent scoring streak in Saturday's top-of-the-table clash with Arsene Wenger's Arsenal. E-mail to a friend