Brightonian
Full Member
The good thing (from our perspective) is that Wayne has the opportunity to prove his critics wrong each and every week, with a goal or two, one good performance or more. Cards on the table: my concerns about Rooney range from the perceivably silly and trivial (I wasn't best pleased by his removal of all United-related imagery from his Facebook page at the height of Wayne's problems with SAF) to the sensible and basically impersonal (concerns about his poor form's effect on the club's future progress); but...he can always silence my doubts - he surely has that within him still - and, as a United supporter, I'd be overjoyed if he shut me up. There are very few actual 'Rooney haters'; instead, there are many who, like me, just want Wayne to play in a way that befits his status at the club and in the press. We're not asking for the totally unreasonable, such as world-class performances every game, just a level above basic competence.
Excellent post. But I think there definitely are a handful on here who are basically pleased - even if they're not entirely conscious of it - when he's poor. Not because they hate him, but because they've spent a long time thinking and arguing that he's bad and have lost sight of the fact that it would surely be better for them if he proved them wrong with a run of excellent form than proving them right by playing poorly.