The Kid brings gunfighter's spirit to Goodison

Everton 2 Middlesbrough 1

Steve McClaren said he was so involved in the stuttering performance of his own team, which, admittedly did lurch confusingly from better than adequate to the deeply inept, that he quite missed the impact of Everton's 16-year-old Wayne Rooney. To be fair to the Middlesbrough manager, he did appear to have his tongue wedged in his cheek. It was just as well. Missing Rooney would have been a bit like overlooking the role of the Earp Boys at the OK Corral.

He did not find the net – in fact he has three months to dislodge Joe Royle as the youngest-ever Evertonian scorer – but he did change the game utterly.

Rooney, who stepped forward last week and offered to solve the club's goalkeeper crisis – strictly on a temporary basis, he insisted – introduced a new dynamic, a new spirit, a new raging consistency of purpose and if he's still performing on Merseyside in two or three years' time it will mean that his protective manager, David Moyes, has dragged the club, kicking and screaming and counting the pennies, back among the élite of English football. Nothing in this game made that possibility seem vaguely likely – except the arrival of the kid from Croxteth, an area of Liverpool which operates in a twilight world between working-class respectability and the tougher side of life. "It's not Kirkby," said one Goodison sociologist, "but then nor is it Beverly Hills." Maybe not, but this has plainly not prevented The Kid from being showered in stardust.

He also appears to have intestines made from tungsten. Within minutes of his appearance at the start of the second half, Boro, who had controlled much of the first half, were on the back foot, a situation they were never able to change. In that brief time Rooney had smashed a shot against the Boro goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer, made several galloping runs while adhering the ball to his feet, provoked cries for a penalty, and found his way into the referee's notebook for firing the ball at the backside of Schwarzer, who had been reluctant to surrender the ball for an Everton corner. By this time Boro would have required the presence of the kind of major player Rooney is promising to become to change the momentum.

The best Boro had been able to come up with was the pace of Massimo Maccarone, which constantly undermined the Everton back line, in which the normally solid David Weir and Alan Stubbs seemed to a lose a little more confidence by the minute. The Slovakian Szilard Nemeth, who converted an early rebound from Maccarone, posed a waspish threat and for a while Géremi and Joseph-Desiré Job threaded their way through midfield – where Everton's Chinese-sponsored import Li Tie often displayed a Confucian detachment which left his scrappy team-mate Thomas Gravesen in a more or less permanent state of rage – with some profit. For a while this promised to be enough to steal the points, but Rooney changed everything.

Understandably, the Everton manager was keen to stress that he was not about to preside over the "Wayne Rooney Show." But that was not to dispute, he added, that the boy was a genuine source of excitement. "I'm going to play him when I think it's right and everyone needs a little patience in this situation. Today I thought he could shake things up to our benefit and he did. The first time I saw him I realised he was something special. What struck me most was his football intelligence."

He played one ball to the dashing Tomasz Radzinski which could not have been bettered by the young Paul Gascoigne. That is a comparison which some might see as the tempting of fate, but Rooney's instincts appear to be rooted more in improving his game than his celebrity image. Affection for him at Goodison is already high, and understandably so. He runs with the ball as though it is life's most natural activity and as the clock ticked down on Everton's three points he combined an old head with his young legs.

Kevin Campbell, twice the age of his team-mate, was required to go the full distance on his own combination of old head and old legs, but the overall result was a striking triumph. He levelled after Radzinski struck a post and brought victory with a quite imperious glancing header from a Gravesen corner.

Campbell struggled in the early going, several times falling over his own feet, but eventually he was, as Moyes said, "able to make things happen. He's at a point in his career when he appreciates every game."

When Rooney reaches the age of 32 the odds would suggest that he will have a similar relish. At the end of the week which had Patrick Vieira complaining of fatigue and Manchester United missing still another step, the 16-year-old again filled the old stadium with that most valuable accompaniment of all serious talent. Maybe we have to spell it out for £60,000-a-week Vieira. It is called desire. The Kid is awash with it.

Goals: Nemeth (11) 0-1; Campbell (32) 1-1; Campbell (77) 2-1.

Everton (4-4-2): Gerrard 6; Hibbert 4, Weir 3, Stubbs 4, Unsworth 5; Alexandersson 4 (Rooney 8, h-t), Gravesen 6, Li Tie 3, Pembridge 5; Campbell 7, Radzinski 6 (Carsley, 85). Substitutes not used: Simsonsen (gk), Li Wei Feng, Linderoth.

Middlesbrough (3-5-2): Schwarzer 5; Ehiogu 6, Southgate 6 (Whelan 5, 74), Cooper 5; Stockdale 5, Greening 4, Geremi 5, Nemeth 5, Queudrue 6; Job 6 (Boksic, 81), Maccarone 5 (Marinelli, 81). Substitutes not used: Crossley (gk), Wilson.

Referee: M Messias (York) 4.

Bookings: Everton: Stubbs, Rooney. Middlesbrough: Schwarzer.

Man of the match: Rooney.

Attendance: 32, 240.