Good analysis of Rooney here, bit 'dry' but the highlight below:
http://www.statsbomb.com/2014/01/statsbomb-mythbusting-five-years-of-wayne-rooney/
What Have We Learned?
A lot of things I personally did not expect when I started digging in to the data.
I did not realize that Rooney lead the league in normalized scoring contribution last season.
Rooney is actually experiencing his best season in recent times across a large number of metrics this year.
Looking at the data, it’s fairly clear that Rooney’s best role is as a second striker or playmaker. His key pass numbers aren’t up there with Ozil or Silva, but they are high, and Rooney’s goalscoring still eclipses either of the playmaking maestros by some distance.
Rooney has only been the best scorer in one of the last 4.5 seasons, but he’s been close every single time. That sort of consistency in what is one of the toughest leagues in the world to score in, is damned impressive.
Does Rooney Deserve £300K/week?
There’s a loaded question. Does anyone, let alone any athlete, deserve £15M a year? That’s too philosophical to answer either way.
However, make no bones about it, Wayne Rooney is probably the best overall scorer the Premier League has seen in the last half decade (for what it’s worth, I actually think Fabregas had a chance at this if he’d stayed at Arsenal, but alas…). Additionally, while I would normally be worried about falling production in a 28-year-old forward, Rooney has two very important things working for him.
1) His best role is as a more cerebral playmaker (I know, I know… the jokes write themselves), which means a marginal loss in pace or physical ability will not affect him as much as it would a speed striker.
2) Even though people might not know it, at 28, he is currently experiencing his best season in recent times. Is it sustainable? Nobody really knows. However, even if this is the peak, a new 3- or 4-year deal at this point probably won’t smart too much in the last season of the deal unless Rooney has serious injury problems, something to this point he has completely avoided.