Wayne Rooney | 2012-14 Performances

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It's the first game of the season people. It's well known that Rooney isn't that interested in dieting or keeping himself fit, and without the day in day out training and conditioning during the off-season, he will always balloon and loose sharpness.

I do think we should expect to see him on the left over the course of the season though. But Rooney will be as effective as always whichever position in the front three he gets.
 
I wonder

a. how many other top class players get this level of justified criticism and still hold the rank of top class player

b. how many times do we have to say the same thing about Rooney. Becoming all too common place.
 
I think it's unacceptable, Arshavin did the same thing 2 years ago and basically never got back. (OK he's 3/4 years older). Don't they have a set of scales at the training ground (and fine you like feck if you're not in range?)
 
apotheosis said:
It might be for him, certainly not for us! He used to be a special player, regularly doing special things.

Seems a long time ago since that overhead kick, and not much sign that he is getting anywhere near the type of player he was meant to become. He is supposed to be our game changer, someone who we can look to to provide that spark of genius that makes the difference.

He still scores goals, but i just don't see anything that special about his play anymore.
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Agree wholeheartedly. He's a very good player, but not a game changer. I don't think he is worth 200,000 a week either, but then again, there are very few players who I feel are worth that who aren't named Messi.
 
204Red said:
I wonder

a. how many other top class players get this level of justified criticism and still hold the rank of top class player

b. how many times do we have to say the same thing about Rooney. Becoming all too common place.
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Very common criticism of Eiður Guðjohnsen back here.
 
Andrew~ said:
It's the first game of the season people. It's well known that Rooney isn't that interested in dieting or keeping himself fit, and without the day in day out training and conditioning during the off-season, he will always balloon and loose sharpness.

I do think we should expect to see him on the left over the course of the season though. But Rooney will be as effective as always whichever position in the front three he gets.
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And for an allegedly profesional footballer that is unacceptable. As big a cnut as he is, look at the shape tevez is in after the summer.
 
204Red said:
I wonder

a. how many other top class players get this level of justified criticism and still hold the rank of top class player

b. how many times do we have to say the same thing about Rooney. Becoming all too common place.
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By that same token, how many other players on the planet provide the all-round game and end-product that Rooney does throughout a whole season? ;)

Don't get me wrong though, this Rooney situation is a problem. When Rooney is off-form, it can feck our whole team up because we still play through him. We are far, far less likely to have this problem playing Kagawa behind Van Persie. When Rooney is on-form he's a fantastic player, but he's really lost his spontaneity these days.

To be fair though, Rooney has had a ridiculous career so far. The level of exposure and scrutiny since the age of just 16...perhaps this has got to him, causing him to over-think things on the pitch and play like he's trapped inside his head. Anyone who has played football a decent amount will tell you that your dribbling and first touch suffer massively when you're over-thinking and not being spontaneous on a football pitch - perhaps this is what's happened with Rooney. He's a fantastic footballer and is easily good enough to control a football under pressure, and I'm not entirely convinced it makes sense that these parts of his game should be consistently so poor at times without their being some sort of significant mental situation.

Another theory along those lines - perhaps when he/we toned his aggression down we made him a more anxious footballer. I'm sure I as well as others have said this a million times on here, but I think it's a genuine possibility.
 
peterstorey said:
I think it's unacceptable, Arshavin did the same thing 2 years ago and basically never got back. (OK he's 3/4 years older). Don't they have a set of scales at the training ground (and fine you like feck if you're not in range?)
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So, we're now comparing Rooney to a guy who played two good months of football in the EPL? You can wum better than that.
 
When he's off he's not even a little dangerous. Everton wanted that game much more than we did, they looked twice as cohesive in all phases of play.
 
I just dont think he possesses the same hunger and drive anymore. His conditioning and physique after pre-season is pathetic for a professional. Look at Ronaldo to see how hard he works to keep himself in optimum shape. I hope SAF has the courage to drop him and plays RVP and Kagawa upfront with Rooney as a substitute until he proves
himself to be worthy of starting again.
 
There's no point in playing him against Everton, he rarely does anything of note against them. He'll turn it on against the other team and score a few goals which will make us forget about this this soon enough.
 
If he needs game time, then do it in the reserves like 90% of all players. He used to be the focal point of all our attacking plays but not anymore. With Kagawa and RVP, we have 2 players capable of keeping Rooney out of the team and thus selection has to be always based on meritocracy, ie form, conditioning, morale, etc
 
Sparky_Hughes said:
And for an allegedly profesional footballer that is unacceptable. As big a cnut as he is, look at the shape tevez is in after the summer.
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Tevez is carrying a LOT more body-fat than Rooney.

The way people link size/shape to the performance of various players is tiresome and a bit mental. A poor performance and everyone decides they're fat as butter. Play well and not a mention of their physique.

Rooney's looked lean enough in pre-season. Definitely slimmer than the likes of Tevez. He didn't have a great game last night but he rarely does against Everton. Big deal. The service to him was shit and Everton's central defenders both played out of their skin. As always, the hordes of knee-jerk whingers on here are adding 2 + 2 to get 85.
 
I know this is slightly left-field...but I'm been wondering how Berba and RVP might play together? No doubting Berba's talent and vision, clever player when flicking that ball to unlock a defense...possibly something RVP would really enjoy....perhaps it might be worth a go for a couple of games?

.....on second thoughts...that ain't going to happen is it.....!
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Tevez is carrying a LOT more body-fat than Rooney.
The way people link size/shape to the performance of various players is tiresome and a bit mental. A poor performance and everyone decides they're fat as butter. Play well and not a mention of their physique.

Rooney's looked lean enough in pre-season. Definitely slimmer than the likes of Tevez. He didn't have a great game last night but he rarely does against Everton. Big deal. The service to him was shit and Everton's central defenders both played out of their skin. As always, the hordes of knee-jerk whingers on here are adding 2 + 2 to get 85.
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Now if we are talking about a fat feck.....then Tevez goes top of the list...for sure
 
SittingBull said:
I just dont think he possesses the same hunger and drive anymore. His conditioning and physique after pre-season is pathetic for a professional. Look at Ronaldo to see how hard he works to keep himself in optimum shape. I hope SAF has the courage to drop him and plays RVP and Kagawa upfront with Rooney as a substitute until he proves
himself to be worthy of starting again.
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To be fair, Ronaldo had an average game against Valencia on Sunday, he doesn't look ready for the season yet, wrong example.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Tevez is carrying a LOT more body-fat than Rooney.

The way people link size/shape to the performance of various players is tiresome and a bit mental. A poor performance and everyone decides they're fat as butter. Play well and not a mention of their physique.

Rooney's looked lean enough in pre-season. Definitely slimmer than the likes of Tevez. He didn't have a great game last night but he rarely does against Everton. Big deal. The service to him was shit and Everton's central defenders both played out of their skin. As always, the hordes of knee-jerk whingers on here are adding 2 + 2 to get 85.
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Why play him then?
His shitness atm has nothing to do with his body shape, that I agree with you. His first touch was abysmal, he took way too long to get control of the ball and his passing wasnt good neither.
I don't know what the fecker is doing to get so out of form everytime he gets a break from football. It's more than annoying and for me, he should definitely be dropped if he doesnt get his shit together next week. We got a more than capable replacement for him in RvP.

------------Rvp------------

Val-------Kagawa-----Nani

looks good enough for me.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Tevez is carrying a LOT more body-fat than Rooney.
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Tevez actually looks in great shape at the moment, not that I think that Wayne is looking overweight at the moment. Waynes bottom level is horrendous though, hence the fierce debate in this thread over his 'world class' status.
 
He will score some goals and people will wank again.

People forget that Drogba had spells where he was total shit too.

Everything with Rooney is overhyped to death.
 
Jimy_Hills_Chin said:
Tevez actually looks in great shape at the moment, not that I think that Wayne is looking overweight at the moment. Waynes bottom level is horrendous though, hence the fierce debate in this thread over his 'world class' status.
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Tevez still has a bit of a spare tyre. Slimmer than he finished last season but definitely fatter than Rooney. Which really confirms my point about the way performance seems to distort perceptions of body fat.

Out of interest, who on our team doesn't have a "horrendous bottom level"?
 
RedDevilCanuck said:
He will score some goals and people will wank again.

People forget that Drogba had spells where he was total shit too.

Everything with Rooney is overhyped to death.
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Yeah Rooney does get it a lot sometimes. I do think it all stems (as someone else mentioned on here) from that transfer request. There is a lot of love/hate about Rooney from many United fans. I sometimes think quite a few would be rather gleeful to see his slow demise!!

If the signing of RVP did anything (and we have yet to see the positives on that) it certainly added ammunition to the fans who have a problem with him.

Having said that....he was shit last night :)
 
He was shit but he was by no means the only one.

Nani and Welbeck were also very poor.

The Everton game reminded me of Newcastle away last year. The only difference was that we were even more dominant in midfield at Goodison. That said, like at SJP, we were unable to deal with their crude but effective long ball tactics. The problem also was that despite our possession, we struggled to fashion much.
 
He was so shit last night. It was almost comical by the end of the game.

He also appeared to completely ignore every run RVP made too although that just probably comes from a lack of any understanding.

That said, he's still one of our most important players. I just really wish the club would clamp down with him and his conditioning though.
 
Freshen the side up - If we get $80m from Ciddy for him we can pay the debt down and play Kagawa, RVP and Henriquez as well as all the other strikers. Happy days. We might even win on Mersyside.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Tevez still has a bit of a spare tyre. Slimmer than he finished last season but definitely fatter than Rooney. Which really confirms my point about the way performance seems to distort perceptions of body fat.

Out of interest, who on our team doesn't have a "horrendous bottom level"?
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Scholes, Cleverley, Vidic, Smalling, Welbeck and Valencia, off the top of my head. Rooney did virtually nothing right last night and looked like he couldn't trap a bag of sand. On a couple of occasions he received the ball and just stood there whilst an Everton player closed him down and dispossessed him with ease. On a few more ocassions he received the ball and looked like he had forgotten how to turn with the thing, for the most part, he looked appalling.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Tevez still has a bit of a spare tyre. Slimmer than he finished last season but definitely fatter than Rooney. Which really confirms my point about the way performance seems to distort perceptions of body fat.

Out of interest, who on our team doesn't have a "horrendous bottom level"?
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Yes Tevez is still bigger than Rooney, but during the summer he has gotten better and looks to be ready, Rooney has done his usual trick of turning up, with his guarenteed starting place and thinking, ahhh it'll be ok, Ill be ready by mid september. Its simply not good enough. People say the whole contract thing is in the past so let it go, why? When someone behaves like that and holds your club to ransom, we as supporters have every right to expect that person to give 110% and be as professional as any player on the planet. Rooney isn't.
 
Jimy_Hills_Chin said:
Scholes, Cleverley, Vidic, Smalling, Welbeck and Valencia, off the top of my head. Rooney did virtually nothing right last night and looked like he couldn't trap a bag of sand. On a couple of occasions he received the ball and just stood there whilst an Everton player closed him down and dispossessed him with ease. On a few more ocassions he received the ball and looked like he had forgotten how to turn with the thing, for the most part, he looked appalling.
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Nah, that's being completely melodramatic.

Watch the Kagawa highlights video someone posted to see Rooney playing a hell of a lot better than you described. It doesn't include the little nutmeg and run which almost set Nani up, by the way.

As always, people are getting completely carried away as far as Rooney is concerned. Disagree with most of those players you listed having a poorer "bottom level" fwiw. Even playing badly Rooney is always looking to get involved. Far rather that than the completely anonymous peripheral displays you get from most other players when it's not their day.
 
Sparky_Hughes said:
Yes Tevez is still bigger than Rooney, but during the summer he has gotten better and looks to be ready, Rooney has done his usual trick of turning up, with his guarenteed starting place and thinking, ahhh it'll be ok, Ill be ready by mid september. Its simply not good enough. People say the whole contract thing is in the past so let it go, why? When someone behaves like that and holds your club to ransom, we as supporters have every right to expect that person to give 110% and be as professional as any player on the planet. Rooney isn't.
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I'm certainly no Rooney basher since he's been a brilliant player for us when all things considered and properly remembered. However...something really isn't quite clicking for him this year. His control has got a bit wayward for some reason and his reaction time has seemed to have slowed.....

It is frustrating when people go on about him needing a few games under his belt to get going. We have had a pre-season...and he has played a few games already.

Having said that, I can see the matchday thread already next week against Fulham....."roooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy....get in"

;)
 
I don't accept the fact that he takes always takes 4-5 shit games to get back into form. We/he should figure out a way to get him near his best without sacrificing the team. I don't care how we do it - training, diet, fitness work etc. It's been happening almost every season, we need to figure out how best to manage this problem. He's been in the game long enough to realise whatever he's doing at the moment isn't working.

How do you think our other squad members feel when a woefully out of form player gets 90 minutes no matter how he plays?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Nah, that's being completely melodramatic.

Watch the Kagawa highlights video someone posted to see Rooney playing a hell of a lot better than you described. It doesn't include the little nutmeg and run which almost set Nani up, by the way.

As always, people are getting completely carried away as far as Rooney is concerned. Disagree with most of those players you listed having a poorer "bottom level" fwiw. Even playing badly Rooney is always looking to get involved. Far rather that than the completely anonymous peripheral displays you get from most other players when it's not their day.
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Pogue, you seem to me to go into firefighting mode on here after a bad game, like nothing bad could have happened and everything is going to be just 'fine'. You seem to think that I am just pulling things out of my arse like 'bottom level'. This is what Micah Richards had to say about one of our players and their 'bottom level'.

"People say he is a great player, but you have to define what a great player is. For me, it is a player who has a bottom level that means his worst performance is not noticed. If he is having a bad game, a teammate might feel he is not quite on his game, but a spectator wouldn't notice. he, of all the players I have played with, has the highest bottom level.

We will just be 'fine', of course, we can't win everything all the time but it is interesting to debate what went wrong, rather than taking the apathetic road and saying 'it is one of those things'.
 
Even if Rooney's bottom level isn't as low as other players, it effects us a lot more than other players since we always start him and never sub him off. Secondly, Rooney's integral to all our attacking play, everything goes through him. So a bad game for him costs us a lot more since he messes up our attacks.

If someone else has a bad game, we'd haul him off around the hour mark and might think twice about starting him next game. Never the case with Rooney. Perhaps this is in Rooney's mind as well? He can play as shit as he wants and he knows he'll still be in the team next game.
 
Rooney's bottom level is the worst of the lot, no other player in the squad will have a touch as bad as his, and no other player in the squad will give the ball away as much as he does. I don't even know why he plays against Everton anyway, he's been crap against them for years now. Scored in 1 game out of the last 10 against them.
 
Jimy_Hills_Chin said:
Pogue, you seem to me to go into firefighting mode on here after a bad game, like nothing bad could have happened and everything is going to be just 'fine'. You seem to think that I am just pulling things out of my arse like 'bottom level'. This is what Micah Richards had to say about one of our players and their 'bottom level'.

"People say he is a great player, but you have to define what a great player is. For me, it is a player who has a bottom level that means his worst performance is not noticed. If he is having a bad game, a teammate might feel he is not quite on his game, but a spectator wouldn't notice. he, of all the players I have played with, has the highest bottom level.

We will just be 'fine', of course, we can't win everything all the time but it is interesting to debate what went wrong, rather than taking the apathetic road and saying 'it is one of those things'.
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So you agree? Great :)

Look, I always end up going too far in the opposite direction after a loss because I can't help getting wound up by so much of the ill-informed nonsense that infests this place when we drop points. This means I end up going a bit Chemical Ali and give the impression all our players had a blinder and there was nothing at all we could have done differently.

In reality, I do think a number of our players let themselves down. I do think Rooney had a poor game, I think Nani was very disappointing, Welbeck should have done better and the less said about our back four (all of them) the better.

What I disagree with in this particular thread is all the ranting and raving about Rooney, which gives the impression that he's three stone overweight and sat on his arse sucking his thumb for 90 minutes. He worked hard for the team, was always willing and generally used the ball ok. You like stats. Here's one to put Rooney's "terrible bottom level" in perspective. He completed 40/49 passes (82%) Fellaini completed 35/48 (73%)

Out of interest, who was Micah Richards talking about?
 
I'm certain that so called Micah Richards quote was a quote on Scholes by Schmeichel.
 
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