Best & Worst: Dean is in Rooney's sights

At this rate, the Manchester United player could break an 83-year-old goalscoring record this season.

Wayne Rooney looked pretty happy after completing his second hat trick in as many games by scoring Manchester United's final goal in 5-0 blowout of Bolton.

Best target - Dixie Dean

A sizeable chunk of Everton supporters doubt the veracity of Wayne Rooney's early-career pronunciation, made via a T-shirt slogan, that he was "once a blue, always a blue".

But he clearly is. He has even inflicted a lifetime of suffering on his toddler son, Kai, by starting him off supporting them already.

There were tears before bedtime, for instance, when Mikel Arteta left the Goodison Park club for Arsenal in the transfer window, as young Kai had the playmaker's name on the back of his Everton shirt. Ironic how much it hurts when a terrace hero departs your club.

As an Evertonian, Rooney will know well the digits behind one of English football's most famous goals records.

In 1927/28, Dixie Dean struck 60 times in one league campaign for Liverpool's blue team. Given his ridiculous early season form, which has brought him eight goals in four games and back-to-back hat-tricks, Rooney should break that record with about eight games to spare this season. Possibly.

Best movement - Hernandez

He is only 23 and a few short months ago he was being hailed as the next big thing.

One niggling injury later, allied to the sparkling start to the season made by the even younger Danny Welbeck, and Javier Hernandez had almost become an afterthought already.

Three games spent trading notes with Dimitar Berbatov and Michael Owen about what it is like to be yesterday's man on the Manchester United bench were more than enough for the Mexican, though.

After Welbeck's hamstring injury, sustained against Arsenal, had let him back in, Hernandez has made a compelling case for winning his place back alongside Rooney for good.

Saturday at Reebok Stadium was a return to the blistering attacking which marked him out as a star in his first campaign in the Premier League.

His first goal contained more changes of direction than a schizophrenic wasp, and left Gary Cahill, Bolton's England centre-back, wondering where the man he was supposed to be marking had disappeared to.

Worst dilemma - Spurs fans

Rooney knows he is guaranteed a hostile welcome at least once per season, namely when United play away at Everton. But at least he is well-liked among his home fans at Old Trafford.

Not all players enjoy such a luxury, however. Since moving to England to join Arsenal in 2006, Emmanuel Adebayor, the Togolese striker, has been collecting enemies with just as much haste as he has collected clubs.

The supporters of the fourth team he has represented in the past two years, Tottenham Hotspur, probably hated him more than anyone else in his growing list of antagonists.

At least, that was until he scored on his debut for them against Wolverhampton Wanderers, to set up their first league win of the season on Saturday. So now the White Hart Lane faithful have to like him, which probably feels more than a little bit weird.

Worst movement - Gyan

Steve Bruce, the Sunderland manager, never saw it coming.

"I'm baffled," he said, after revealing he had shaken hands with Asamoah Gyan after getting verbal confirmation of his striker's commitment for the rest of the season, just 48 hours before he boarded a plane for the UAE. There is no surprise Al Ain had something up their sleeve, given their poor campaign last season, as well as the eye-catching arrivals of the likes of Diego Maradona, David Trezeguet and Lucas Neill elsewhere across the UAE.

They do not usually accept second best for too long in the garden city, and Gyan's talent as a centre-forward could easily make them contenders again.

But perhaps the Ghana striker should have told his manager about it first.

Best little man - Silva

Players who are 5ft 7 ins (1.7m) tall are not supposed to be able to survive in the hurly-burly of the English Premiership.

Especially when they are slightly-built, tricky players from Spain with long hair and a good first-touch. No future in the UK.

But English football - or the Premier League, at least - has come a long way since such stereotypes held water.

Amid the four-goal haul from Edin Dzeko, a hat-trick for Sergio Aguero and the conspicuous absence of Carlos Tevez - as well as the fact he is only little, anyway - it has been easy to overlook David Silva.

It was a marker of just how good the jinking schemer from Spain was for Manchester City on Saturday that most pundits had him down as the man of the match in their 3-0 win over Wigan, even though Aguero had scored three.