Never played one minute of it
Poll: Is Wayne Rooney past it and should he be sold?
- Thread starter Raees
- Start date
Never played one minute of it
Well I guess that's that then, you're completely right! My bad
Ad Hominem:
attacking the person instead of attacking his argument. For example, "Von Daniken's books about ancient astronauts are worthless because he is a convicted forger and embezzler." (Which is true, but that's not why they're worthless.)
More like wondering where the basis for the argument stemmed from. An understanding of the game as a participant or as a spectator. I dont see where Ive "responded to his argument by attacking the persons character". Is it against the rules to ask where someone gets their point of view?
Honestly, you can't even give an indication as to why it was bad. It was Andy Carroll-esque. Okay, because it wasn't Maradonna-esque it was Andy Carroll-esque instead? That isn't even a quantifiable metric. If you, in your own words doubt you'd be able to find a performance where a footballer failed to find a team mate under 60% of the time, then you would by your own definition class something in that vicinity as a horrible performance. Due to the fact that it is so abhorrent you can't even fathom it? Because that makes more sense than the rest of your post.
One bad touch summed up an entire 90 minutes? Why? Because he mis-controlled a ball? Did the Morgan Schniederlin header at the back post that he could barely direct on goal sum up his performance? Again this is the same sort of thing, just saying Rooney was terrible and horrible without being able to really back it up. If one were to say it was poor or average, or not his best day then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Yes, I understand he was below average in that Villa game. However, I think it would be absolutely bonkers to call time on his career at the moment. If he ends up bouncing back from this and going on a scoring run there will be few left standing with some credibility. Far to many have dug a huge hole for themselves, if history tells us anything it is that he will go on a run of scoring at some point in this season. I feel a lot of people have bet on snake eyes far to early in the piece. I'm still holding my money, I don't think I will be putting it down anywhere near him because I don't think he fits this system properly enough to score a lot of goals.
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Good post. Agree with pretty much everything.
Too early.
Managers have been dicking around with his position for yonks, I still think hes got gas in the tank.
Managers have been dicking around with his position for yonks, I still think hes got gas in the tank.
Bit weird people are declaring him past it when he has always been capable of pub performances one week and world class performances another week.
So, tell me how you rated Gabby Agbonlahor's performance in this match?
I personally think Rooney is the most underrated players in the world (at least on here)! He has bags of all round talent and yes maybe he has had patches or poorer form, but he is a class act and has been one of our best players consistently since he joined!
The notion of selling him has been a terrible idea for a long time.
The above being said, if we could get in someone like Muller I think Rooney would be a better 10 option, with Muller at 9!
But in absence of someone younger and in the top few players in the world it is hard to beat the class of Rooney.
The notion of selling him has been a terrible idea for a long time.
The above being said, if we could get in someone like Muller I think Rooney would be a better 10 option, with Muller at 9!
But in absence of someone younger and in the top few players in the world it is hard to beat the class of Rooney.
I didn't notice him, naturally I didn't pay as much attention to the individual performances of players on the other team as I did with mine.
I saw enough to know that he wasn't particularly impressive though, but he did not stand out enough to the point where I thought it was particularly horrible.
I think you are still thinking of the Rooney of years gone by. Your opening paragraphy may give the impression that he was one of the leading players in the world, when anybody who started watching football, say, three years ago would see absolutely nothing special about him, and probably wonder why he has the status he has at United.
One bad touch? Every touch was bad mate. In fact you would be hard pressed to find a good touch from him in that game. So no 1 bad touch didn't make it a bad game, but all of his touches did. His passing was awful, his touch let him down all night and ultimately the game past him by. I can think of several times he got the ball and seconds later I groaned in disappointment.
I didn't actually say drop him or that he was past it or that he should call time on his career. I said he needs someone to apply some pressure to his position in the team!
And as for the chap who said he stopped really my post after I said I didn't support England... I'm entitled to my own opinion and England are quite possibly the dullest team I've had the misfortune to watch.
In fact every England performance bar the odd one or two is a replica of the last. I've sat there watching a game and the whole game feels like Deja Vu. Pass pass pass, get nowhere, boot it long and repeat. Until the opposition get he ball and look better with it even when the opposition is some minnow.
It was a pretty similar performance, however he only had 8 touches compared to Rooney's 36.
Every touch?.. EVERY touch? Come on, you're destroying your own credibility here. This is just more revisionism to suit the narrative that Rooney is shite. People only claim to see the bad touches and make their argument from there.
In fact, I didn't actually say he only had one bad touch. I asked why that the one particular touch in the 90th odd minute summed up his performance, funnily enough it has been one of only two touches in the box in the first two matches.
The thread is entirely about him being dropped and/or sold, that is the context. (Not sure about the further argument, I don't think that was with me.. I am not English and I've never supported England).
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Well hopefully for him he has some fans on a Villa forum like yourself saying it was not so bad as he has seen a game with a person who had 7 touches.
However, I am sure that if it actually was on the level of Rooney's the criticism would be similar. Or not so, given he isn't a supposed superstar who is captain of his country and paid £300k a week. Who knows, that is their problem.
Exponentially, the criticism is probably the same. A bad day at the office for either player. I am not really sure how you go about explaining that a player had a total of 8 touches in 90 minutes, compared to the supposed worst (most horrible, most terrible) player on the field who managed 36 touches only losing the ball twice and misplacing 8 passes. I think the facts lie somewhere in the middle. The fever pitch hyperbole being repeated ad nauseam by many does not help things.
You cannot be feckin serious
One is paid 300k a week and is captain of Manchester United, one is Gabby bloody Agbonlahor.
You cannot be feckin serious
One is paid 300k a week and is captain of Manchester United, one is Gabby bloody Agbonlahor.
After a point, you have to agree to disagree sometimes. Anyone still so vehemently defending such a performance, a performance that even Rooney's biggest defenders on here have lambasted, it is unlikely you will be able to convince them otherwise.
Having few touches doesn't constitute a horrible performance. That has never, ever been the way a horrible performance is measured, and I imagine you know it and are seeking whatever way possible to defend the indefensible.
Many teams have played Barcelona over the years where their striker has barely gotten a kick. It is not recorded as a horrible individual performance. The fact that Gabby had 8 touches in the game meant that he barely received the ball, it tells us nothing else than that.
Forward players are generally called terrible for what they do with the ball, not without it. Andy Carroll is not a universally accepted symbol of shitness because he rarely gets the ball.
The irony here is that you are now defending Agbonlahor for a similarly bad performance with one hand, while crucifying Rooney for similar things with the other. Also you've mentioned Andy Carroll again for a third time, I am still bemused on that front. I have no idea why you keep mentioning him as a form of performance metric.
Anyways, we're done here.
United were utterly dominant for almost the entire game. The fact our striker saw much more of the ball than theirs (fairly sure Agbonlahor didn't last the full 90 either?) tells us nothing about the relative quality of their individual performances.
Under what circumstances would you agree that Rooney is past it? What would you consider a good season for Rooney? I'm just curious about the conditions under which you would stop to defend Rooney here because you seem determined to defend his place in the team no matter what happens on the pitch.
He played the entire 90 minutes. Sanchez came on for Vertout and Sinclair (rather bizarrely I thought? He was causing us real problems before he came off) was brought off for Gestede. According to FourFourTwo anyway..
105 more passes, 10% more possession and 46 more passes in the attacking third.. To me that is not really utterly dominant. But for the sake of the argument I agree with you, we did dominate and starve them from the ball, although we are a predominantly passing team and those stats don't suggest total and complete dominance.
I personally thought they were similarly bad performances in their own right, surely barely even touching the ball for 90 minutes has got to count for some form of atrocity?
He'd probably have to play striker all season in a 4-3-3 where we regularly score a goal or more a game in which he no longer scores or assists. Continues on having 70-80% passing accuracy and getting consistently 30+ touches a game, shooting on target at sub 10% conversion rate. (Shots to SOT) (edit: But then do you say he's doing his job getting out of the way for others to score? At the moment he gets out of the way, Mata plays to deep and the left forward to far outside and then he drifts into Mata's space to pick up the scraps as far back as the half way line).
I've always maintained that I stand by Van Gaal's decision to play him, purely because he is the most adaptable player and that position is where he himself wants to play. But this particular role is not the way you get him scoring a lot of goals and quite frankly, what this system has shown is that we won't be regularly scoring truckloads of goals. It seems more control the game and get at least 1 and then take a few more after that if it happens. Rather than a system where by you aim to go one, two or three up as fast as you can and then control and attack more and try and score a few with the individual instinctive freedom.
Basically we're like a turtle at the moment. Our shell is hard and protects us but our feet are still webbed and we're on land slithering around searching for food, if the system was built around Rooney's strengths then we'd be in the sea swimming freely and snapping up sea life and gorging ourselves. Our shell probably wouldn't be hard and protective, more aid is in swimming deftly and being able to garner more prey.
(my god what an awful analogy! haha)
This probably deserves its own thread. As an England supporter and one who has suffered years upon years of disappointment following them, I can concur, that at times, England are extremely fecking boring and rarely live up to the hype or perform as they should, especially against inferior sides.
I feel confused about Rooney at the moment. He has the talent, and the ability and I am sure there is more to come from him, I don't feel he is past it just yet. But one thing is glaringly obvious and that is he needs help and support and he also needs some competition for his place. I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon and say he is finished yet as it's only two games in to the season, and admittedly although he has been extremely poor, so has the service to him been. He simply cannot do it all on his own and the guy needs help and he needs to be challenged for his position too.
He needs to get back to scoring goals fast. It's as simple as that. Goals can hide a multitude of sins and we won't be complaining about a few bum touches when he is getting on the scoresheet and we are winning games by more than the odd goal.
So would anything other than the parameters set out in your first paragraph be good enough for United, out of curiousity? Not that this was the point we were originally debating, just curious.
It's just the comparison that staggered me, the performance of Agbonlahor is in no way related to Rooneys, mind blowing stuff.
Which is where the lack of chances being created is an issue. Goals aside, that Mata through ball to Memphis was probably the one and only clear cut chance created for any attacking player in 180 minutes of football. Crap and all as he was against Villa, it's not as though he was missing chance after chance. He's a confidence player, who scores goals in bunches. It's just unfortunate that goals have been so incredibly hard to come by for us so far.
Yes I agree and I think that for Rooney to score goals he is reliant on width in the side. With the wingers we currently use it will be important this season for the full-backs to overlap as much as possible to create more crossing opportunities. I believe Pedro will improve things in this regard aswell.
Edit: It's also worth noting that despite the lack of chances created in the Villa game, on another day Rooney, despite being off his game, could still have had a goal from consistently getting himself in the right place.
He was best placed to put in any rebound from Januzaj's goal. He got himself free in the six yard box for Schneiderlin's free header at the back post and was the only player on either side following up on an effort from Depay late in the game. He will sniff out at least 5 tap-ins this season from rebounds and ricochets in the six yard box.
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That is one part. The other part is also that he has been very poor once he had the ball and that he never was in a good position or made good runs. It's not a coincidence that the few chances we created didnt fall to Rooney except the Spurs own goal
In theory Pedro coming in should help Rooney because it'll open up more space for him and also give Rooney more attacking options.
To me most of the images in my head of Rooney are of him dropping in to midfield to receive the ball, making the space to turn and then sending a 30-40 yard pass to the right wing. He can then charge forwards to get on the end of things in the box.
Of course in this current system he looks up to the wide man and no further than 10 feet away is Mata!
Over time he'll get used to the strikers role again. He's done it before and I believe he will do it again. Sadly in the meantime it's just painful to watch him struggle.
To me most of the images in my head of Rooney are of him dropping in to midfield to receive the ball, making the space to turn and then sending a 30-40 yard pass to the right wing. He can then charge forwards to get on the end of things in the box.
Of course in this current system he looks up to the wide man and no further than 10 feet away is Mata!
Over time he'll get used to the strikers role again. He's done it before and I believe he will do it again. Sadly in the meantime it's just painful to watch him struggle.
He was shite against Villa (how many times do I have to say this?) but actually decent enough against Spurs. He's been making plenty of runs and his movement in and around the box has always been (and will always be) very good. His very last involvement was making a dreadful hash of that ball over the top from BFS. Nothing wrong with the run, just the execution when he got to the ball. Incisive passes like that have been incredibly rare in our couple of games so far though.
I didnt see those runs and as I said, you saw them rather from other players. His movement is not where it used to be and we can only hope it's "only" a form issue
Actually think he might score tonight and vs Newcastle for what it's worth. Still don't think he is good enough overall though.
When was his laat world class performance? And how many has he had in the past 7 months? Arguably Arsenal FA and Spurs home, no more.
The basis of his argument was contained in his post (whether or not I disagree with it personally is another matter) - that the bread and butter of a centre forward's role (i.e. trapping the ball, first touch, etc) shouldn't need to be relearned at this level of league and player experience - and you swept over that with a dumb question that basically amounted to 'Well, can you do better?' with absolutely no other set up. His point is neither strengthened or weakened by him personally playing in a 'competitive' league to make this point as he never referenced it.
I'm not sure if it's against the rules but it certainly doesn't lead me or presumably the others that objected to treat your opinion with any amount of weight if you think in those terms, especially as you had nothing else to your post other than this question.
this thread blew up after the final whistle for a reason. LVG was asked about it in the press conference for a reason.
No debating around the fact he has been absolute gash the last few games. Those with a soft spot for him obviously try to defend those 2 performances but they have been shite. Actually as shite as anything I have seen from a striker in a long time.
He needs to get his shit together fast. LvG isn't someone to hold onto players just because of his status. I personally would love to see him dropped. I think he is past it physically and we need to look elsewhere. I'm thankfull for what he has done but also will never forget the fuss he made about leaving. Would love to be proved wrong but I truly doubt it. He has no energy left.
He needs to get his shit together fast. LvG isn't someone to hold onto players just because of his status. I personally would love to see him dropped. I think he is past it physically and we need to look elsewhere. I'm thankfull for what he has done but also will never forget the fuss he made about leaving. Would love to be proved wrong but I truly doubt it. He has no energy left.
I've been saying it a lot of times already, Rooney is just too inconsistent with his form for us. He gets a few games a season where he looks like he's worthy of being a top 10 player in the world, gets injured, takes forever to get back fitness and everybody just says he just needs to play his way back to fitness to be class again.