'Trust Wayne Rooney to take Boxing Day literally. The suspicion that Manchester United have bought the most combustible talent in the game, an investment to make the oil price look stable, gained further credence yesterday after a petulant punch for which he should have been dismissed.
This was the most unremarkable of derbies, with a straightforward United win signalled by Ryan Giggs's 10th-minute opening goal, Bolton succumbing meekly to their fifth successive defeat, and boiling blood nowhere to be seen.
But Rooney still managed to make his own controversy, swinging out at Bolton's Israeli international, Tel Ben Haim, in first-half stoppage time, and presumably escaping only because the officials did not see the incident.
Ben Haim's challenge was clumsy, the intervention of a player who looked out of his depth. Certainly it was not remotely life-threatening. Rooney should have considered it, laughed inwardly at his supremacy and got on with it. Instead came the pugnacious approach and the swing of his right hand that might yet interest the FA's video panel once they have seen the footage.
It will also be pleaded in mitigation that this could not be correctly termed a punch because Rooney's fist was not closed. Such pleas are an irrelevance: Rooney jabbed his right hand into the face of Ben Haim. To term it a slap or a push brings a misleading impression that it was a trifle. It was aimed and deliberate. He should have been dismissed.'