DC United boss Wayne Rooney is reaping the rewards of his team's hard work recently.

The struggling MLS club are looking at turning around their season under the Englishman.

Rooney, who joined when DC United were bottom of MLS last season, has spearheaded an impressive win over league leaders FC Cincinnati.

"You can be strong for 85% of the game against [Christian] Benteke," rival coach Pat Noonan said of Rooney and DC after a 3-0 loss.

"But he has the ability to find the moments to bring the ball down. He's just a real presence in direct play that allows runs in behind or, if they're moving forward as a group, it becomes second balls.

"If you're not successful in those moments, because you're pressing high up the field, then they're able to face goal and it just becomes a real challenge."

"Their size along the backline is a strength," Noonan added.

"Those guys typically eat up everything in the air and they're dangerous on set pieces. They defended the box really well.

"Anything that was in the air they typically eat up, and even the balls where we were looking to arrive late with some of our midfielders, or even our forwards coming off of the center backs, they ate up those spaces as well with [Chris] Durkin and [Lewis] O'Brien. They just defended the box in a really strong way. It's a strength of their group."