I want to differ. Rooney's roaming isn't mindless. He clearly sees the need to get the ball forward which our current midfield is incapable of doing so many times (we can see that too). So he makes those runs in the deep and often more than not succeeds with it by spraying it wide to Valencia/Young or getting it up himself with dribbles and short passes. Even Van Persie did that last season. This is just what it is with Manchester United's current midfield woes. You won't find him doing that with England.
As far as the attempts to chip go, that is just a quirk that players have. I won't call that unintelligent. Nor does he do that a lot or does it when his team is in jeopardy and is need of a goal.
Rooney has so many dimensions to his game that with a tactician like Van Gaal, he can become good at the dutch philosophy of total football.
There's no such thing as 'the dutch philosophy of total football'. Also there is not really such a thing as 'total football', that's just a term the media introduced in after our brilliant 1974 world cup squad made it to the final, and it has stuck with us since then, popping up every once in a while because it sounds good. We usually laugh at that.
At Bayern, this was a team Louis van Gaal used a lot in his first season, he won the double and made a Champions league final with it. Müller is a poor mans Rooney imho, and Olic is a poor mans Van Persie if you will.
------------------- Van Bommel (Carrick/Fletch/Clev/Fella) ------------ Schweinsteiger (signing) -----------------------
------------------------------------------------ Müller (Rooney) ------------------------------------------------------
Robben (Adnan/Mata) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ribery (Nani/Mata)
---------------------------------------------- Olic (Van Persie) ------------------------------------------------------
Obviously Van Gaal might play in a different set-up with us than with Bayern. But I def. see him creating a system in which both Rooney and van Persie could thrive. Van Gaal's pretty pragmatic in his line-ups by the way, whether you call it 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1, 4-4-2 or 4-5-1, as long as he uses wingers and the width of the pitch (which he does 99% of the time) he himself calls it 4-3-3.
But basically his philosophy is that he mostly uses the players he has already to create an attacking, dominant side, that has great ball circulation and creates a lot of chances. And as much as he talks about playing good technical football and all, he has stated numerous times over the years that winning, no matter in what way, is number one priority.
Sometimes his teams press high, sometimes when a team parks the bus, he likes to play what he calls 'Provocative Pressing', which means dropping deep and keeping posession mostly in your own half, so teams that park the bus have get lured into going forward a bit more, and then the defensive teams can be hit on the break, that's just one example of what I meant by saying he can be pretty pragmatic.