Wayne Rooney | 2012-14 Performances

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Pogue Mahone said:
Alternatively, Carrick was always playing well and never deserved the stick he got from some United fans too blinkered to see what he brings to the team. He's now playing exceptionally well. So well that even the numb-nuts I referred to above are forced to grudgingly admit he's a class act. The England stuff is irrelevant. He might still have missed out this season if Wilshere had stayed fit and Lampard/Parker been playing regularly for their clubs.

Likewise with Rooney. If he puts in some absolutely outstanding performances the praise will be unanimous. If not, anything approaching an average display will bring out the usual suspects saying he's peaked and should be sold.

Of course the fanbase don't love or hate players without reason. What they can, though, is fail to grasp the quality provided by some of our less eye-catching or aggressive players and allow preconceptions and prejudice cloud their opinion about performances of certain others.

I can still remember vividly how long it took the hive-mind to decide that, hey, Patrice Evra is actually quite good at football. It took about a dozen great performances for him to get the praise he deserved.
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Well I suppose it is A or B. A being that the vast majority are pretty objective about players' performances and can quite happily call it as they see it; or B being that only a select few enlightened fans such as yourself can see through the haze of ignorance and see these players for what they really are.

Personally I'd say A is far more likely and that the "enlightened" few are actually just incredibly sciolistic.

Carrick hasn't been playing exceptionally for the last 2 seasons, he's been playing well, with periods (particularly this season) of playing very well. Lets not act like he's turned from Parker into Iniesta. He's gone from worse than Barry to much better than Barry. In terms of England - players have always been injured and he's never had a look in, something has changed, the obvious would be his performances.

Or maybe several top level International managers also aren't as enlightened as the chosen few.

Sparky_Hughes said:
Anyone defending that performance from Rooney last night needs to take another look. He put in a minimal amount of effort and did little to warrant selection for the next game. Rvp was fecking Dire as well, why does it have to be about one or the other? Both were shit and quite frankly the next game SHOULD see Kagawa starting behind Hernandez.
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Watch the clip of West Ham's first goal again. Rooney gives the ball away with a moronic 5 yard pass to their defender and slowly jogs back as they counter. If he'd have actually ran he'd have been in the box when the cross came in and we'd have an extra man defending.

The failure to be arsed was far, far worse and more infuriating in my opinion than how bad the pass actually was.
 
Brwned said:
I've never called him a marvellous player or said that he played well. That's the thing. Whereas you regularly mention him playing like a pub footballer. You keep trying to paint this picture where Rooney's worshipped by so many fans and all you're doing is providing the balanced picture but it's just not the case. The only reason there's ongoing discussion in here is because so many people dislike Rooney, not because so many people love him. Surely you can see that? Getting weekly criticism from his own fans...well, these are the same sort of fans that wanted us to sell Ronaldo and bring in Lennon. They're the ones who judge footballers on their "personality", the ones who judge them on what they earn or how they behave and let that could their judgement when the game's on, because it's pretty clear what these people remember and what actually happened are two very different things. Otherwise he wouldn't have played enough games to score over 50 goals in two seasons.
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I don't think I've ever called him a pub player, but whenever I watch a game and think Rooney (or anyone else for that matter) had a shit game it really is refreshing that you enlighten me with your spreadsheets and percentages and remind me that I actually imagined everything I saw.
 
Sparky_Hughes said:
Anyone defending that performance from Rooney last night needs to take another look. He put in a minimal amount of effort and did little to warrant selection for the next game. Rvp was fecking Dire as well, why does it have to be about one or the other? Both were shit and quite frankly the next game SHOULD see Kagawa starting behind Hernandez.
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Agreed.
 
Zen86 said:
I don't think I've ever called him a pub player, but whenever I watch a game and think Rooney (or anyone else for that matter) had a shit game it really is refreshing that you enlighten me with your spreadsheets and percentages and remind me that I actually imagined everything I saw.
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You didn't imagine them, you just remembered a few moments like most of us and for some unknown reason it always happens to be the negative/poor moments from Rooney. I guarantee you'd already completely wiped that bit of linkup play between himself, Kagawa and Evra on the left hand side of the box that was inches away from creating a goal from your mind. Possibly with the Jones chance too. Now only you know the reasons for that but it is very strange that you find so much to criticise from a player that starts 95% of the games he's fit to play. Maybe you should be enlightening the manager about how Rooney's constantly fecking up our build-up play because of below-par technique because it definitely seems to be a bit of a blind-spot to Sir Alex what with him playing him in such a central role for build-up play.
 
This thread has become ridiculous to be honest. The extremes are getting wider and wider as both sides attempt to out do each other and prove points.

Rooney is an excellent player, and while I don't believe he is one of the world's top few players or anything, he's still very good and underserving of some of this flack. Now in his fanboys attempts to defend him, Robin van Persie has fallen from being the best player in the league to fairly ordinary. Fact is, we'd struggle to do too much better as far as first-choice strikers are concerned.
 
Lawman said:
Well not long ago the general opinion was RVP and Rooney were our only world class players so surely it has to be one of the who is our best player and if so both them have been shit for a bit now. But imho Rooney has been better due to his goals since turn of the year.
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Rooney only cares about the big games ;)
 
finneh said:
Well I suppose it is A or B. A being that the vast majority are pretty objective about players' performances and can quite happily call it as they see it; or B being that only a select few enlightened fans such as yourself can see through the haze of ignorance and see these players for what they really are.

Personally I'd say A is far more likely and that the "enlightened" few are actually just incredibly sciolistic.

Carrick hasn't been playing exceptionally for the last 2 seasons, he's been playing well, with periods (particularly this season) of playing very well. Lets not act like he's turned from Parker into Iniesta. He's gone from worse than Barry to much better than Barry. In terms of England - players have always been injured and he's never had a look in, something has changed, the obvious would be his performances.

Or maybe several top level International managers also aren't as enlightened as the chosen few.
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You seem to have got things the wrong way round. I don't consider myself part of enlightened minority. I think the vast majority of United fans have always appreciated what Carrick brings to the table.

It's only a vocal minority that have struggled to grasp his qualities until it's so bloody obvious they've no choice to admit they might have been wrong with all the bollox about how he'll never be good enough for United and should be sold.

As for your quip about managers. Fergie never saw any need to replace Carrick and consistently picked him for all our biggest games. He seems to share the opinion of your imaginary "chosen few" and he knows a bit about football management.

Moving back on topic, I also think that it's only the idiot fringe who don't think Rooney is a really top class footballer.
 
UnofficialDevil said:
What? of course hes good enough, Rooney and RVP with a proper midfield behind them (not our current midfield including wingers) is one of the best striker partnerships I can think of.
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What partnership precisely? They have not really been linking up well as of late.
 
wr8_utd said:
Won't bother defending him tonight because he really was atrocious. He really needs to play upfront and get some goals though because this messing around isn't helping him or us.
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But that wont happen because of RVP so.............
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Aye, it's bizarre. Likewise the doubles standards that lead to this thread being full of comments about Rooney's goals this season masking poor performances, yet Van Persie's (offside) finish last night suddenly means he had a good game. Then, when people post stats about contributions other than goals to support the idea that Rooney out-performed van Persie on the night suddenly stats are pointless. Nowt so blind as those that will not see.

There were two moments which summed up RvP's night for me. In the first half he tried that little step over and drop of the shoulders he used to create the goal against Sunderland, only to fall over his own feet and leave the ball behind. Then, in the second half, he tried to dribble someone near the corner flag and dragged the ball almost a foot out of play. He was clumsy and off the pace all game. Really poor volley straight at the keeper from the Valencia cross too (shouldn't have been offside anyway, he was looking along the line)

But hey, the new caf consensus is that Van Persie's "bottom level" is better than Rooney's "bottom level" so he couldn't possibly have been worse on the night...
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Well if said assertion is true? Are you opposed to it because you seemingly favor Rooney over van Persie? As they say you see what you want to see. The notion of seeing the game objectively is a fallacy. It's all intersubjectivity.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
What? The reason he hasn't been playing up front in our last two games has nothing to do with Van Persie.

If/when Fergie regains his confidence in Cleverley/Anderson we'll see Rooney back in his preferred position.
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What do you mean? We can't even agree let alone Rooney on what his preferred position is. It jumps from no.9 to no.10 to being an advanced midfielder and back again. With RvP's arrival, Rooney cant play as a #9. That's what I was assuming.
 
I really didn't think Rooney's positioning last night was all that different than what he normally plays, he always drops deep to get the ball if we aren't getting it to him. I genuinely forgot Jones was playing several times though so I also didn't really notice that he was playing deeper than Jones. But again, if you leave Jones' position out of the equation I think he was in a very similar position to what he normally plays.
 
BD94 said:
I think it was a case of buying Kagawa with the intention of doing just what I poste above, but then Van Persie became available, and you cant turn that down. Its frustrating though as you can't play the three of them in a team without compromising the effectiveness of one of them.
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The only way I think this can be accomplished in a 4-3-3 but we won't play that
 
Platato said:
What do you mean? We can't even agree let alone Rooney on what his preferred position is. It jumps from no.9 to no.10 to being an advanced midfielder and back again. With RvP's arrival, Rooney cant play as a #9. That's what I was assuming.
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He's a striker. His preferred position is playing as a striker.

Football really isn't as complicated as you seem to think.
 
He was the solution to our midfield problem last week.

But yeah, he needs to play as a striker and that means either dropping RVP, Kagawa or some wingers (Kagawa is wasted out on the wing IMO).
 
Pogue Mahone said:
He's a striker. His preferred position is playing as a striker.

Football really isn't as complicated as you seem to think.
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We may have tried to, but Phil Jones not knowing where to stand on a football pitch sort of made us not play it in the end.
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it's more of a 4-1-5

Anyway, it was more so alluding to the fact that even if we did play 4-3-3 last night, Rooney - RvP - Kagawa weren't the three in it.
 
Cina said:
it's more of a 4-1-5

Anyway, it was more so alluding to the fact that even if we did play 4-3-3 last night, Rooney - RvP - Kagawa weren't the three in it.
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Well no. Rooney played in midfield with Carrick and Jones.

I was just responding to the suggestion that we won't play 433, less than 24 hours after we did exactly that!
 
gza the genius said:
I obviously meant as his main position, you can't argue that he hasn't mostly played behind another striker for the past 3 seasons.
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I don't really care what you meant, I was just pointing out that his preferred position is as a striker and you waded in with that "three years ago" comment.

Whether he plays right up top, or slightly withdrawn, he's at his best when he's playing as a striker i.e. not the role he's been asked to play in the last two games
 
When was the last time he actually spearheaded our attack? If Fergie has an option of playing RVP or Hernandez he prefers to play them as our main attacking threat with Rooney in behind. He is no longer an out-and-out striker and hasn't been for a long time.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Well no. Rooney played in midfield with Carrick and Jones.

I was just responding to the suggestion that we won't play 433, less than 24 hours after we did exactly that!
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Yeah, I was just going back further to when BD94 said the only way we'd see them together is in a 4-3-3, yet for some strange reason it was Jones who was playing behind RvP last night, not Rooney.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I don't really care what you meant, I was just pointing out that his preferred position is as a striker and you waded in with that "three years ago" comment.

Whether he plays right up top, or slightly withdrawn, he's at his best when he's playing as a striker i.e. not the role he's been asked to play in the last two games
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Do you really think the odd game as an actual out and out striker makes your argument any better? For the most part of the last 3 seasons Rooney has played as a withdrawn striker with some one else in front of him and he's excelled there a majority of the time. Apparently now that it isn't really working this season it's because we're doing Rooney some injustice by playing him out of position.

I'm not really sure why I'm arguing though, I'd rather see him up top anyway.
 
Keenst said:
When was the last time he actually spearheaded our attack? If Fergie has an option of playing RVP or Hernandez he prefers to play them as our main attacking threat with Rooney in behind. He is no longer an out-and-out striker and hasn't been for a long time.
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Pogue says he did 12 days ago, which means it doesn't matter that he's mostly been used as a number 10 or attacking mid (whatever you wan to label it) for the past 3 seasons.
 
It's a pointless argument anyway as I think it's safe to assume everyone knows where he plays. It just depends how you define a striker. I don't consider Rooney a striker anymore, in the same way I wouldn't consider Totti a striker.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
One is a midfielder, one is a striker. They're not the same position. Different roles and responsibilities.
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I just don't think it's that simple. Rooney certainly has for the most part played in a role/position that most other teams would place an attacking midfielder, Rooney just happens to be more versatile. I guess it's just semantics, but I really wouldn't consider the role he's been playing to be that of a striker (odd game aside, obviously), not since 09/10.
 
Imo Rooney's best position is actually striker not behind one as he is the most consistent there.

Behind the striker he can be really inconsistent these days.
 
Steven Seagull said:
Jesus that graphic of Jones is unreal. Why would we have him that advanced its mental. Is he up there to give us an option for Rio to smash it 50 yards so he can bump into Collins? Was that the intention? Strange day at the office.
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I'm starting to wonder if Jones is the new Owen Hargreaves...I mean headless chicken.
 
Steven Seagull said:
Jesus that graphic of Jones is unreal. Why would we have him that advanced its mental. Is he up there to give us an option for Rio to smash it 50 yards so he can bump into Collins? Was that the intention? Strange day at the office.
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Typical Ferguson 'tactics'. Leave Carrick on his own, play Rooney out of position and hope for the best.
 
feck me John, where are the usual hysterics? You've done good this time to contain yourself given the amount of criticism he's had.
 
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