It surely doesn't at all - you just cannot compare the resources Strachan squandered with the pressures and total lack of money etc Rooney had to go against.
I get that, but I don't see how achieving Strachans record could be seen as an achievement regardless of what you had available to you. In that first season with that terrible run he had the following players available to him: Bielik (7m), Bird, Buchanen, Nathan Byrne. Matt Clarke, Curtis Davis, Craig Forsyth, Lee Gregory, Jozwiak (Polish international 5m), Kazim-Richards, Jason Knight (Irish international), Tom Lawrence (35k/week), David Marshall, Patrick Roberts, Kelle Roos, Shinnie, Sibley, Waghorn (7m), Andre Wisdom.
That's 19 senior players that commanded one of the biggest wage bills in the championship bar the parachute teams, lots of experience and championship quality, and still he went 15 games with 1 win. Second season, fair enough, the squad started to get striped down, but no excuse in that first year, and if Derby were not in such a financial mess he would have been sacked at that point.
For what it's worth I think he did about as well as he could last season. But over all, hands tied or not he failed. Even last season he had players that would have walked into Lutons squad and he was miles behind them.