Wayne Rooney | 2012-14 Performances

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akash02 said:
There is not a single player we can realistically hope to sign who brings as much as Rooney does to our team. Kagawa and Modric are laughable suggestions
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I think that's the key - what he brings to Utd, rather than if he played in another team.

We usually play a 2 man midfield (as opposed to the rest of Europe who play 3 CMs) and basically Rooney is the best AM/second striker who is also able to play that role as a 3rd CM when required.

Plus the amount of goals he scores, despite being shifted from left wing, right wing, AM, striker, is quite phenomenal.
 
Rooney is a great player but, I wouldn't be overly fussed if he left. I don't see the point in selling him, but I think people who are saying he's the 'heartbeat' of our team or 'irreplaceable' are way off.

I think if you look at raw statistics, Rooney's contributions as far as goals and assists would leave a big hole, but I think him leaving would merely mean the team would adjust it's playing style slightly, just like we did when Ronaldo left.

Selling Rooney would be a lot easier to move on from than when we sold Ronaldo because we have players in the squad ready to come in (especially Kagawa, who has the ability to get the same kind of goals/assists once he settles down in England) and cover the hole he would leave.

That being said though, I very strongly doubt he's going to be sold.
 
Rooney is as irreplacable as a player can be.
That's not to say any player is "irreplacable", since no one player makes a team and a team will find a way to make it work without said player one way or another.
But in terms of what he brings, what he accomplished and how dependent we are on him, I could only say 3 players in the world are in this situation, Rooney, and the 2 mutant demi-gods we call Messi and Ronaldo.


And besides, where is all this talk of possibly selling him coming from anyway?
 
OGkush said:
Rooney is as irreplacable as a player can be.
That's not to say any player is "irreplacable", since no one player makes a team and a team will find a way to make it work without said player one way or another.
But in terms of what he brings, what he accomplished and how dependent we are on him, I could only say 3 players in the world are in this situation, Rooney, and the 2 mutant demi-gods we call Messi and Ronaldo.


And besides, where is all this talk of possibly selling him coming from anyway?
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This is another gripe I have, why this need to shoe-horn Rooney into a class he quite simply has no place being in? There are a few players better than Rooney, and one of them even plays for us!
 
wr8_utd said:
Rooney doesn't look arsed? Who's that guy wearing a number 10 jersey for us, running around like a maniac in the 93rd minute of games and making crucial blocks/tackles/interceptions? Not being arsed is one thing you can't ever accuse Rooney of. Quite often he looks like the only one who gives a damn.
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Ladies and gentlemen......exhibit A: Despite the eveidence of his own eyes a usually reasonable poster claims you can NEVER accuse Rooney of looking uninterested. When its a big game or his head is in the right place you cannt.....but as gza says, when he is out of form and or returning from an injury there have been more than one occasion of Rooney looking like he would rather not be there and putting in less than 100% and any attempt to deny that is just blatent fanboy revisionism.
 
Sparky_Hughes said:
Ladies and gentlemen......exhibit A: Despite the eveidence of his own eyes a usually reasonable poster claims you can NEVER accuse Rooney of looking uninterested. When its a big game or his head is in the right place you cannt.....but as gza says, when he is out of form and or returning from an injury there have been more than one occasion of Rooney looking like he would rather not be there and putting in less than 100% and any attempt to deny that is just blatent fanboy revisionism.
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Well like I said, when he's returning from injury, his form might not be there but it almost never looks like he's not trying. Even when he's out of touch he's trying his arse off. Ofcourse maybe there are a couple of occasions when that might not have been the case.
 
For me it's like if you had a favourite restaurant and one day you got really bad service there. Would you say, the service there is shit? Or would you say, there was that one time it was shit, usually it's good, they must have been short staffed that day.

It really doesn't happen often enough for it to be used as a stick to beat him with.
 
Andrew~ said:
This is another gripe I have, why this need to shoe-horn Rooney into a class he quite simply has no place being in? There are a few players better than Rooney, and one of them even plays for us!
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He doesn't have a place among the best players?
And while I appreciate RvP and everything he's done for us so far I don't agree with you on this, but besides this wasn't even about ranking Rooney as better or worse than a particular player, it was about trying to explain he's a player his team is very dependent on.

And honestly, tell me the names of players (besides those 2) that you think any team is more dependent on than we on Rooney. Yes, we've got a very high quality squad and we would get by without him, just like we managed to get by without Ronaldo, even if Messi left Barca and Ronaldo left Real those teams would still be incredibily strong and would manage to challenge on all fronts, they wouldn't however be as strong and their style of play would have to change.

The only one that comes to my mind other than those 3 might be Bale, and even he just very recently became the be all and end all of Spurs with AVB giving him the freedom to roam around the pitch like he pleases.
 
Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber said:
I wouldn't want to lose him. But he is replaceable.
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not even Messi is irreplacable, that's the point, no one player is.
however what I said was "he's as irreplacable as a player can be" for his team, putting him in the same bracket as Messi, Ronaldo (and lately Bale).

It's not even ranking players' quality, it's ranking their importance.
I'm pretty sure most would agree Iniesta is a better player, yet Spurs are more dependant on Bale than Barca on Iniesta.
 
People said we would struggle once Keane left, the cycle rolled on. They said we wouldn't score goals when RVN went to Madrid. They said we wouldn't win anymore once Ronaldo moved on. If Rooney was to leave, I have no doubt we would continue to succeed. We've lost more important players in the past and have coped just fine. Not saying I want him to leave either because I don't, but we would manage just fine if the money was reinvested into improving the team. Arsenal are just the same as last year, when everyone said they over relied on RVP, yet Cazorla and Wilshere are stepping up. Spurs lost Modric, they signed Dembele and are arguably even better now.
 
OGkush said:
He doesn't have a place among the best players?
And while I appreciate RvP and everything he's done for us so far I don't agree with you on this, but besides this wasn't even about ranking Rooney as better or worse than a particular player, it was about trying to explain he's a player his team is very dependent on.

And honestly, tell me the names of players (besides those 2) that you think any team is more dependent on than we on Rooney. Yes, we've got a very high quality squad and we would get by without him, just like we managed to get by without Ronaldo, even if Messi left Barca and Ronaldo left Real those teams would still be incredibily strong and would manage to challenge on all fronts, they wouldn't however be as strong and their style of play would have to change.

The only one that comes to my mind other than those 3 might be Bale, and even he just very recently became the be all and end all of Spurs with AVB giving him the freedom to roam around the pitch like he pleases.
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I don't really understand how you can throw out this mantra of being 'dependant on Rooney', when we have a player who's scored nearly double the amount of goals with as many assists in the league. How can you even begin to rationalise something so ludicrous?

If we were 'dependant' on Rooney, based on his form this season, we'd be where Spurs are. So I don't think I need to come up with a list of players whose teams are 'dependant' on them, because Rooney isn't one of those right now. Last season, definitely. But not now. Players that are better than Rooney though? Van Persie, Ibrahimovic, Falcao, Iniesta... I consider Rooney to be on the same level as Benzema, Aguero, Tevez, Bale, Mata, Silva etc. All fantastic players, but not as effective as the other group, and nowhere near touching the Ronaldo/Messi level.
 
We're as reliant on Rooney as we are because of his versatility and our lack of quality options in other positions. It's as simple as that to me. We rely on Rooney to do things no other striker does because he's capable and because of a lack of options. Add these other players and suddenly Rooney isn't near as important. I'm not trying to downplay his ability by any means, but if Rooney was only ever used in his best position (striker/second striker) we wouldn't rely on his nearly as much.
 
Adebesi said:
Some ludicrous article claiming PSG will bid £150m for him. Otherwise it's all a totally pointless hypothetical debate. It is anyway, as PSG won't bid that amount for him.
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I don't think the article mentioned any figures, just that they were considering an 'audacious' bid. One or 2 posters threw around a hypothetical £150m, it was made up by posters & has nothing to do with any rumoured bid.
 
The figure the Times came up with was 40m - which isn't even enough to bump the thread for, never mind add new pages. An audacious bid certainly, cheeky is probably a better term.
 
OGkush said:
Rooney is as irreplacable as a player can be.
That's not to say any player is "irreplacable", since no one player makes a team and a team will find a way to make it work without said player one way or another.
But in terms of what he brings, what he accomplished and how dependent we are on him, I could only say 3 players in the world are in this situation, Rooney, and the 2 mutant demi-gods we call Messi and Ronaldo.


And besides, where is all this talk of possibly selling him coming from anyway?
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It depends on your definition of irreplaceable. For a lot of teams I too believe that Rooney would be irreplaceable, but for ours I'd say he's far from it. If we are talking about replacing him with another player (ignoring Messi/Ronaldo), a team such as the following wouldn't do any worse (and would definitely have the potential to be better in my opinion) than what we currently have:

Valencia Wilshere Carrick Cleverley Nani
____________RVP

Replace Cleverley with Hernandez if you'd prefer a 4-4-2. Obviously in the short term the likes of Pirlo or Xavi, arguably Toure could be switched with Wilshere and in my opinion the team wouldn't be weakened (not that you'd do that "trade" due to their ages). In the longer term Busquets/Iniesta/Martinez of course.

This is obviously a lot to do with how much stronger our midfield and therefore our team would be with a World Class player in the centre of the park.
 
We've performed fine without Rooney in the team this year. Sure he makes our team better with him in but he's overrated on here. With RvP our team is still class. There's no way we're as dependant on him as RM and Barca are of Ronaldo and Messi, or even Spurs with Bale.
 
Still remember his debut like it was just yesterday. From the first day, he was made for Manchester United. "Over the Moon, We got the Roon" :devil:
 
I can't figure out wether some of you are trying to convince others, or trying to convince yourselves about how brilliant Rooney is. He's a very, very good player and is capable of moments of brilliance that can change games, but he isn't one of the very best in the world. I don't want him to leave, but if he does, I won't be half as gutted as I was when Ronaldo left. He's going to be 28 this year, and he doesn't strike me as the type of player who's going to really get incredibly better in his older years like Van Persie. Basically, I want him to stay, but if he leaves its not the end of the world, with RVP, the ever improving Welbeck and Hernandez waiting to take his place, not to mention that we'd surely get a good replacement in.
 
Don16 said:
I can't figure out wether some of you are trying to convince others, or trying to convince yourselves about how brilliant Rooney is. He's a very, very good player and is capable of moments of brilliance that can change games, but he isn't one of the very best in the world. I don't want him to leave, but if he does, I won't be half as gutted as I was when Ronaldo left. He's going to be 28 this year, and he doesn't strike me as the type of player who's going to really get incredibly better in his older years like Van Persie. Basically, I want him to stay, but if he leaves its not the end of the world, with RVP, the ever improving Welbeck and Hernandez waiting to take his place, not to mention that we'd surely get a good replacement in.
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Wouldn't count on it. And Hernandez and Welbeck really aren't at a level to take over full time from Rooney and perform his role in our team.
 
What people forget about Rooney is that he's kind of like a super-O'Shea in regards to what he brings to the team.

RVP gets hurt? He's our best line-leading striker. Young/Nani both injured? Stuff Rooney on the left. Midfield getting overrun? Stick him as an AMF. Need some creativity? Stick him in the 'hole'. Hell, need work-rate and ability on the right to negate a mr. Ronaldo? He'll make a decent RMF.

That's something very, very few players can offer.
 
acnumber9 said:
Fergie himself has questioned Rooney's intensity in some games.
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Where? I'd be interested in the context.

As I said before, he's only human, maybe very occasionally he doesn't play with as much intensity as we'd like. Even then, most of the time he only falls short of his own high standards, because that is his game. I'd be interested to see SAF criticising Rooney, I bet he's only comparing his intensity to his own usual standards, not saying his intensity is poor in absolute terms.
 
Beachryan said:
What people forget about Rooney is that he's kind of like a super-O'Shea in regards to what he brings to the team.

RVP gets hurt? He's our best line-leading striker. Young/Nani both injured? Stuff Rooney on the left. Midfield getting overrun? Stick him as an AMF. Need some creativity? Stick him in the 'hole'. Hell, need work-rate and ability on the right to negate a mr. Ronaldo? He'll make a decent RMF.

That's something very, very few players can offer.
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His versatility is a huge benefit, I agree. However it's important to note that this versatility is often only utilised when someone better is playing up front. RVP is better up front, so Rooney gets played on the wing. Ronaldo is better than Rooney, so likewise he gets moved around.

It's not as if we are shifting Rooney out of position to accommodate Hernandez in the most important games (for example Welbeck also gets shifted out of position in favour of better players).
 
Don16 said:
He's a very, very good player and is capable of moments of brilliance that can change games, but he isn't one of the very best in the world.
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Well what does that mean?

If you mean he's not one of the top 3, you'll not find many people that disagree. If you mean the top 20, you'll not find many that agree.
 
Anyone doubting he's at the very least in the top ten in the world needs to watch that video. They'd do well to note that it's celebrating his 150th goal for United. just 18 months later he's very nearly at 200, despite playing as a number 9 about three times in that period.

He's probably going to be our all time greatest goalscorer before he turns 30.
 
Rooney is only in the top 10 if we are talking about forwards. If we include defenders and midfielders, I think he'd probably make top 20.
 
In Continental Europe, Rooney is widely regarded as one of the finest players in the world. We'd be absolutely nuts to let him go, and SAF knows it... as was shown in 2010 when we bowed down to Rooney's demands. Yes, we've got RVP now, but why weaken a considerably strenghtened team by selling one of our top two players? :wenger:
 
wr8_utd said:
Wouldn't count on it. And Hernandez and Welbeck really aren't at a level to take over full time from Rooney and perform his role in our team.
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What's this obsession with his role in the team? If we didn't have Rooney we'd play a different set-up, not shoe-horn a square peg into a round hole.
 
Don16 said:
Yeah fair point. I just feel he's awfully over rated on this board sometimes.
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I think most on this board considerably under rate him.

I don't know if there's some resentment towards him since that contract issue a few years ago but the opinion of him since then has never been the same.
 
shaggy said:
We've performed fine without Rooney in the team this year. Sure he makes our team better with him in but he's overrated on here. With RvP our team is still class. There's no way we're as dependant on him as RM and Barca are of Ronaldo and Messi, or even Spurs with Bale.
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Yes we're "fine" without him. We're also "fine" without RVP. Without either of them we're far from fine though. Hernandez will never be good enough to start week in and week out for United and Welbeck still has a long way to go.
 
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