Holding court in the grandiose surrounds of a Macau hotel during Manchester United’s pre-season tour to Asia last July, Sir Alex Ferguson ventured that Wayne Rooney was about to have the kind of breakthrough campaign that Cristiano Ronaldo enjoyed the previous term.

Given that the league season was only 40 minutes old when the forward suffered a fractured metatarsal, that forecast seemed ill-judged, but Ferguson believes that Rooney, overshadowed again by Ronaldo for much of the campaign, will have a decisive say before the season is out.

With Ronaldo winning all the plaudits, it has been a curious season for Rooney, whose tally of eight Barclays Premier League goals is only a third of that managed by his Portuguese team-mate. By comparison, Rooney’s contribution has been understated, more often winning praise for his workrate than for his more renowned abilities with the ball at his feet.

The 22-year-old has failed to score in his past five matches and, remarkably, has not scored a league goal at Old Trafford since October, but Ferguson expects Rooney to reach top form as his team’s title challenge comes to the boil. “The season isn’t finished,” the United manager said. “He showed his real form towards the end of last season and scored important goals for us, so he’s well capable of getting more than 20 this season.

“All strikers, particularly younger ones, when they’re not scoring they start to wonder where their next goal is coming from, whereas when they are scoring they don’t think it’s going to end. Wayne’s no different. All the strikers need that confidence factor in their make-up to score and I’m sure Wayne will get that and score more than 20 goals this season.”

At present, Rooney has 13 goals in 32 appearances in all competitions — more than half of them in a seven-game purple patch between October and early November — but, while he is a player with an unmistakable team ethic, the boyhood Everton supporter would certainly relish a goal against Liverpool tomorrow, particularly if it enabled United to move closer to a second successive Premier League title. History is on their side, having won six and drawn one of their past seven league meetings.