Manchester United 5-0 Portsmouth: The Daily Mirror match report

The name's Rooney, Wayne Rooney, and he has a licence to kill.

Six months ago, Sir Alex Ferguson - or M as he's codenamed - called Rooney into his office to outline his mission for this season.

Old Trafford's top agent, 007 Cristiano Ronaldo, had defected to Real Madrid and they needed Rooney to fill his sharpshooting boots.

Rooney's agent status would immediately be upgraded to '00' and his brief would be to become their penalty-box king.

The England hitman accepted the challenge and has become the most ruthless and clinical finisher in the Premier League, if not Europe.

He has found the target 21 times in 24 league games to leave his opponents shaken and stirred and Patrice Evra claims 0010 is an assassin in front of goal.

"He wants to be a killer and that's very important for us," said Evra. "He understands what the team needs and we're seeing what a great player he is.

"He's a world-class player and is getting his just desserts because he's now more mature. He concentrates more on staying around the box.

"He's not lost any desire to still press the ball and things like that, but now he knows he needs to score a lot of goals because Ronny has gone. He's changed his mentality, now he wants to score."

Manchester United skipper Gary Neville, who has worked with some fine '00's in his time at Old Trafford from Eric Cantona to Ruud van Nistelrooy, claims the challenge for Rooney is not just to score goals, but to score big goals.

United's season is entering the business end with AC Milan and a Carling Cup Final against Aston Villa looming this month and Neville hopes Rooney can continue his red-hot form in these games.

"He's having a fantastic season and he's a fantastic player," said Neville. "Hopefully he can continue till the end of the season because we're going to need him.

"The important thing is that he scores the important goals - it's not how many.

"We're coming to a period with big games like Milan and it's important for him to get goals at the right time rather than quantity. That's what we need over the next few weeks."

Rooney has more than filled the hole left by Ronaldo and 15 of his team-mates have also netted in the league to give United's goals-for tally a healthier look.

They have 61 from 25 games - compared to just 68 from the whole of last season - which has cheered Fergie who was worried their dwindling goals total might undermine their title challenge.

"We've done that all season," said Neville. "You've seen it in the last few weeks and it's really important for the team that players contribute. We'll need all the goals because we've got big games coming up at this time of the season."

Saturday, which saw a step-up in the anti-Glazer protests, was another case of United sharing the goals round, although two of their strikes were own goals.

Rooney displaced his predatory instincts to head United in front from six yards out on 40 minutes with his 23rd goal of the season, which matches his best-ever tally, before Anthony vanden Borre turned home Nani's shot to make it game over on the stroke of half-time.

Michael Carrick's shot deflected off Richard Hughes for the third on 59 minutes before Dimitar Berbatov scored the pick of the bunch, cutting back from the byline to score low into the far corner with his right foot three minutes later.

Marc Wilson's volley from Evra's cross in the 69th minute was a fine strike, but unfortunately for the Pompey centre-half at the wrong end.

United won at a stroll to mark fittingly the 52nd anniversary of the Munich air crash and the run-out was the ideal game ahead of Wednesday's testing trip to Aston Villa.

Fergie was even able to bring Rooney, Berbatov and Darren Fletcher off with a quarter of the match remaining to give them a breather.

Pompey's Hassan Yebda was glad to see the back of Rooney and the Scouser has bagged four goals against them this season.

Yebda hopes Rooney is not so prolific when they next meet in Cape Town on June 18 when England take on Algeria.

"Rooney loves Portsmouth because every time he scores against Portsmouth," said the midfielder, who is on loan from Benfica. "He's a good player and he deserved his goals against us.

"He's in great form, he scores every game so I hope he won't be like that in the World Cup against us, Algeria. I hope he doesn't like Algeria! It's OK that he scores now, as long as he doesn't score against us in the World Cup."

Yebda's more pressing concern is keeping Portsmouth up and the Premier League's bottom club are seven points from safety after winning just one win of their last nine games.

Just as they did at Manchester City last time out, Portsmouth had chances at 0-0 - Jonny Evans cleared off the line from Nadir Belhadj - before they alarmingly disintegrated in the second half.

They are rapidly running out of games and Yebda admits tomorrow's clash at home to struggling Sunderland represents their last chance of a fightback.

"We have to concentrate on the next game against Sunderland and we will do everything to win that game," he said.

"We have to do everything on Tuesday because I think maybe it's our last chance. We have to know that, go on the pitch with a good mentality and have a good game.

"We know it's our last chance so maybe the pressure will be good for us. Now we have to demonstrate what we can do on the pitch."