Despite not actually playing very many minutes so far this season, Michael Owen has always been a re-assuring option to have on the bench or at least waiting in the wings should Rooney or Berby not be available for whatever reason.

Now that we know we can count him out for the rest of the season, we look for those other options and, to be quite honest, there aren’t that many.

Rooney has been absolutely immense so far this season but I am almost positive that Fergie had tomorrow’s game against Wolves pencilled in as as good an opportunity as we are likely to get for the remainder of the season to give him a rest.

I think he would have been on the bench with Owen and Berby resuming the partnership that worked well in the Carling Cup Final until Owen’s injury called a premature end to it.

The word was that Rooney went into the England game with a minor knee injury. With this in mind and with the game being a meaningless friendly, we are all a bit pressed to understand exactly why Capello played Rooney for 85 minutes. It certainly wouldn’t have done his injury any good.

If the injury is still troubling Rooney then surely Fergie now has to let him rest. Imagine if it develops into something worse and he has to miss a couple of the upcoming matches?

if Rooney is rested tomorrow, who does he play? Berby is clearly not the man to do the lone strikers job so he needs someone alongside him (the slight predicament here is that Fergie does like to employ the 4-5-1 formation in away games!)

Kiko Macheda has become something of a forgotten man despite his heroics last season. He has been injured recently and Fergie has said that he is about to resume training so I doubt we’ll be seeing much of him for the next couple of weeks at least.

Danny Welbeck is, of course, on loan at Preston and I can’t see him being recalled as his longer term development is probably more important than a short term fix for United (he’s not exactly the solution anyway).

That leaves Mame Biram Diouf. I believe this player was brought in with next season in mind rather than this (he didn’t even come to us until January despite being purchased in the Summer) but at 22 years of age, he can hardly be considered a “kid” and physically, I think he’s ready to go into the first team right now. We’ve not had much chance to see him play for the first team but anyone who has been watching the reserves recently will know that this lad has many of the qualities required to be a top class striker.

Namely: Pace, shot power (right and left foot) , accuracy, a cool head, height and a willingness to chase down balls to keep an attacking move alive.

So if Rooney is rested tomorrow, that’s what I would like to see – Berby and Diouf.

Or even just Diouf with the midfield getting forward more to help him out. It’s about time a midfielder scored again (the last midfielder to actually score in a Premier League game was Park in January against Arsenal).

Sorted.