Contrary to many, I think Rooney will play quite well at the Euros and (initially) under Mourinho; why? because he'll have to - it's his last chance to be considered a top-tier player and so maintain his elite-player treatment for club and country. While teams insist on showing him enough respect not to hassle him when on the ball, he'll get away with fooling people, managers and all.
10
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 41
- Goals
- 15
- Assists
- 6
- Yellow cards
- 5
- Status
LVG refused to invest in our attack because he wanted Rooney as his main man. Where is he now?
Rooney will also add Roy to his casualty list.
I feel for England fans. I am almost certain he will have a poor tournament. Hopefully it gives Mourinho the liscence to dump him and n the bench.
Rooney will also add Roy to his casualty list.
I feel for England fans. I am almost certain he will have a poor tournament. Hopefully it gives Mourinho the liscence to dump him and n the bench.
How? Rooney is terrible in midfield, distribution is average, he continues to give the ball away, and clearly his best days are behind him. Why shoehorn rooney in midfield? when he is past it, when united can sign a top class midfielder that is better than anything rooney has to offer. Rooney is shoehorned into the team, he is not a midfielder, never has been and never will be. Fergie thought rooney's best days were behind him, and that has proven to be true
He might want to but IMO, he's not physically capable. The added reinforce nts we will bring will put even more pressure on him.
why is your judgement so bad?
That's the thing @TrustInJanuzai, he doesn't play the role well and outside of a few isolated instances, he never has. I just hope Mourinho doesn't prove to be as stubborn in picking Rooney as LVG was...
I've said this somewhere before - if someone offers you £20m, take it and sell him.
If you're striving to be around the top, you cannot let underperforming players hang around for so long. It's not a season of underperforming as well, it's been at least two, and Rooney's fitness could very well decline further.
I'd be happy to see him continue in midfield though. :P
If you're striving to be around the top, you cannot let underperforming players hang around for so long. It's not a season of underperforming as well, it's been at least two, and Rooney's fitness could very well decline further.
I'd be happy to see him continue in midfield though. :P
Can't see anyone in Europe offering us 20m for him though with his wages and the signing on fee he and his agent would demand. It's very difficult to offload players like this profitably. He also seems to have quite a lot of influence in the dressing room so letting him go abruptly might backfire.
Never said it the buying club had to be Europe. :P But you're right, he won't be easy to sell.
As for the influence in the dressing room, given the hatchet jobs on Moyes and LvG, maybe it's a good time to "reset" it as well.
Oh yeah, we might lose a great deal of character our current team obviously possesses, never say die attitude on the pitch, true leadership ever-present in the team and winning mentality that wasn't thrown into dumpster even if it looked that way.
It is not how football works but I disagree with that point. It is one thing to play as a CM it is another thing thing to play as a make shift. When players transition from one position to another, they tend to be very proficient in their natural and they carry on the "excess" into another role. Look at the likes of Alves, Mascherano, Lahm, Zanetti, Maldini et al, these guys mastered their primary positions and were amongst the best in the world at the time when they got shifted into other positions. it wasn't until when they were done and dusted, failed in their primary capacity before they nailed down another position.
Valencia is effectively a failed winger and if you think that he is a very high level RB, then we are finished. He plays more like a make shift player than a proper RB. To call him a high level RB (high praise indeed) is to say that as far as RBs go, he is in the top bracket. He is not even in the top 10 RBs in the PL. He lacks the key attributes that the top RBs do and his physicality and energy is what gives him the opportunity, that still doesn't make him a RB. Blind has done well in his first season as a CB, would you call him a CB, despite playing more games there than Rooney has in CM. They're are all make shifts. This isnt bad in itself but let's not be naive and pretend a player can just become a CM just like that.
Don't take this the wrong way but do you know the difference between an SS and a CAM? They are completely different roles and Rooney was always best used as the former. The SS is NOT a midfield role in anyway, so just because some pundit say he was always going to be a midfielder doesn't mean they are right. The whole #10 business was a desperate attempt by the English media to try to fit in with the elite teams on the continent. Calling Rooney a #10 was laughable at the time. Fergie , rightly used Rooney as a support force to more potent strikers like RVN, RVP, Saha, Chicarito, Ronaldo etc but never as a creative force which is primarily from the wings. Before you knew it, every Tom, Dick and Harry was called a #10, from Wilshire to Barkley to Sterling to Alli, pure desperation . Lallana is the only one closest to a #10. From there, he has now progressed to becoming the new Paul Scholes. What next? The next DM?
Wayne is not a midfielder neither is he a better midfielder. He simply just played better than midfielders that were mismanaged, underused , out of favour , low on confidence and definitely out of form. He's our player but let's not be blinded by our love for the club all the time.
If every single player was on sale, how clubs do you think would say, "let's buy Rooney for our midfield"! How many forwards in world football have successfully converted to a CM?
On the contrary, I think the reinforcements, if they are top class, will lessen the burden of creativity on him and create a bit more room for him. He could function as a 10 in a front four but he'd have to up his work rate a bit. If Mourinho could live with Oscar as a ten then Rooney has a chance.
Its clear that he will start the season in the first 11 and its up to him to keep it that way because I don't expect Jose to maintain those infamous privileges.
I think Valencia is easily in the top 5 right-backs in the league and is ridiculously underrated in that position.His positioning can be suspect but his strength, pace and energy make him formidable both in 1-1 defending and as an attacking outlet. He absolutely bossed Alexis Sanchez in a game and was excleent against Hazard the year before so im not sure what else he can do to get rid of his detractors. I fully expect him to be first choice under Mourinho in that position but thats a debate for another thread.
Your reading way to much into the CF(SS)-CAM debate, football isnt as technical as people make it out to be and formations, positions dont mean half as much as fans would like to think. The main thing is that Rooney knows how to play with the game all around him rather than just being able to handle the game being behind him like other pure strikers. If you have positional awareness then your able to play in CM and one of Rooneys best attributes as always been his ability to see the bigger picture of the game, his intelligence on the pitch if you will. When players slow down they often drop into deeper roles, the best and most famous example being Scholes who started as a similar CF and moved deeper till he played the deep lying play maker. Now i dont think Rooney has Scholes quality and should be our deepest midfielder but hes certainly got the ability to provide some goals and assists from deeper.
In terms of saying hes played better than other midfielders that have been "mismanaged, underused, low on confidence, out of form" all of those same things could be put in the direction of Rooney as well which might indicate that instead of a huge decline hes actually not playing at his top level. His brilliant career to date makes that just as likely as saying a 29 year old player has just suddenly become shite. Just a quick query, do you like Rooney?and did you like him in his pomp (as a player and person) because the answer to that will change the way i judge your view
Mate, you can't use the same measuring stick for Rooney and the other players. Rooney was not in the same boat as these guys were. Do you think fans will be on Rooney's back if they were all in the same boat? Whether knowingly or not, you keep on ignoring this obvious fact. I'm hoping the others get a fair and equal chance that was only afforded to Rooney. Even if blame can be laid on the system, Rooney still had a lot built around him.
Lampard role. Zlatan top and Martial left. Rashford to play on the right and rotate with Zlatan and a new right winger. Sorted.
Well rightly or wrongly i do measure all the players by the same stick because thats the fairest way.
Rooney can't be measured by the same increments as the other CM's as clearly he has huge preferential treatment to say Herrera and Schneiderlin who played on egg shells and were prone to be dropped on a whim, where as no matter how bad Rooney played his starting spot was secure, that security alone breeds extra confidence.
Yeh probably correct but i cant see that preferential treatment occuring to the same degree under Mourinho. That being said Rooney being captain and having well known qualities does mean that managers are much more likely to try and play him into form.
Those qualities are in the past, much of what made Rooney a threat is gone, he's declined substantially on a physical level and shouldn't be given a CM birth instead of buying in a proper top class CM. He should compete with Ibra for the striker role and that's it.
I suspected you were going to ask me that, haha.
I'm a football fan and a supported of Manchester United. I owe no allegiance to any player and I call it fair and square, whether you play for Liverpool, City , Leeds or United. Just because a player plays for Manchester United, it doesn't make them immune to criticism. I still have a massive poster of Wayne Rooney, I still have my first player selfies with Fellaini on my Nokia 6230 (throw back. Lol) but will not stand in my way of criticism or praise. Did I like him in his pomp? I thought he was an awesome player, not my favourite by any stretch as I have a preference for CMs over Forwards. Do I think he is amongst the best forwards in my time? Far from it but he was an awesome player in his pomp IMO. Do I like the fact that he toyed with us during contact negotiations twice? No but it still does not infringe on my opinion in his on field display . Doe stay answer your question?
As for the 29 year old player suddenly becoming crap. It's because sport age is different to regular age. You calculate sport age from when an individual begins to exert close to his maximum potential on his physique. To is Rooney 30, but sport wise he has the body of a 35 year old. You have to appreciate that Rooney has been pushing his frame 4 years earlier than his peers had started. Not only that, he was an energetic player in his prime and by the time he was 27 his body gradually began to slow down. If I'm not wrong, footballers tend to have an avergae playing span of 15 years, injuries permitting. If Rooney started at 16, it makes that by now , he is way into his decline. Look at Designs, he didn't start till like 21, he's 38 and still active and in his decline. Rooney's body is shot and honestly is not too different from Gerrard in his final years at Liverpool. He wasn't as bad as Rooney was in the context of a whole season regardless of how biased United fans want to be but he just had to go for the sake of the team. In similar fashion, fans, pundits and coaches tried to shoehorn him whenever the opportunity arose. He has left, they have a new manager and the players look like they can get better but Gerrard is still a legend.
This is why you can't keep feeling like people hate Rooney, he time is near and that is just the reality. It's nothing personal, it's just the circle of life. He has had a good career that has spanned a long time. That's just it really. The fact that his form and decline has been a topic for discussion for United and England for a few years now is testament to that. If at 28, people feel like his time was nearing its end, it says it all really.
For this reason, we can't keep using history or past career achievements to justify his privileges. Like I earlier stated, Raul was much better than Rooney is now, so good that he left for a very good team in Schalke and helped them to 2 successful campaigns. But because if his status, he needed to be moved on to allow others behind him to also reach their potential. Personally, I don't think he can't do much better next season and making excuses, changing formations all the time to suit him, shoehorning will not make anything better. One game for England , the golden was finally put on the spot light, like wise in the good display against Germany in Rooney's absence, he was also up for discussion.
Mate, all good things come an end. I admire your support for him but it's only a matter of time before things change.
This is a good post and i can understand why you have your opinion. You might well be right that his body has gone and he can no longer play at the top level and im also well aware that all good things must come to an end. I just wouldnt feel happy without giving him one season under Mourinho to see if hes absolutely done or if hes been a victim of the system because at the end of the day if he can find any semblance of top form hes a hell of player. Perhaps im basing my opinion on nothing but bind faith and i will only know that after another season. What i think we do know tho is that Rooney isnt getting sold this summer. Rightly or wrongly managers, his fellow professionals and the media still hold him in the highest regard so i dont see him being sold before Mournho gets a chance to view him himself. What i also realise is that if im sat here in January still defending Rooney then im wrong and hes probably not done enough.
We are being linked with midfielders left right and center. Ibra is supposedly coming in too. Where the hell does Rooney play?
sounds like Mourinho is happy to see Rooney end his playing days with us.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/jun/08/wayne-rooney-manchester-united-jose-mourinho
“I am happy to say now that, whatever may happen in the future, I will never play for another Premier League club,” Rooney said.
“I am happy to say now that, whatever may happen in the future, I will never play for another Premier League club,” Rooney said.
off to china, then.
LOL. It would be funny if Jose keeps using him often. I said that awhile ago though.
Tbh, why not? He is a club and england's great. I see him still very useful for the teams for 2 more years. He is United's captain too.
Not many managers who take the job right now would not just discard a player like him right away especially when you have no idea who to replace at first.
Tbh, why not? He is a club and england's great. I see him still very useful for the teams for 2 more years. He is United's captain too.
Not many managers who take the job right now would not just discard a player like him right away especially when you have no idea who to replace at first.
Rooney still has his basic skill set but his ability to compete at high tempo is virtually shot. I actually have no doubt he could turn in 3 or 4 impressive performances for us as a midfielder but there's no way his body can maintain the kind of intensity for 38 games the English premier league is known for.
Father Time claims all of us and Wayne in not exempt from the laws of nature.
Father Time claims all of us and Wayne in not exempt from the laws of nature.
wow he looks old there
He'll still be an automatic starter next season. Mourinho won't want to rock the boat instantly as he'll be weary of what happened at Chelsea repeating itself.
Well what happened to Van Gaal could well happen to him here in that case.
Indeed.
But I imagine he'll ensure that the quality in other positions are of a standard that reduce the reliance on a player that can't be relied on in a big manner anymore.
If Rooney of the first half of last season returns we'd be in trouble though. That was a complete farce.
I'm sure he could try that but looking at who we are competing with we'd be in trouble anyway unless we sign a Ronaldosque player, City do not have to carry anyone, Spurs aren't going away and Wenger looks like he's finally caught on. If we are to achieve top 3 we will need to Rooney to step up or lose his privileges for a player who can, imo.
I think Mourinho will up the quality of the squad to the point where Rooney knows he needs to be on top form or be on the bench. He will squeeze him out of the team and Rooney will be forced to accept being a bench player or move elsewhere.
Mourinho will be subtle in getting rid of him rather than take Wayne on directly due to the length of his contractand lack of realistic suitors (no team in england would take him who can afford him and one Rooney himself would be interested in).
I can't see Jose being stupid enough to build a team round him and think he's going to lead us to success. You don't spend 6 months out analysing us and come to the conclusion that Rooney is a worthy starter for a team with EPL and CL aspirations.
Keep him on board until the contract wears down and once we have more leverage on our side.. we can get rid.
Mourinho will be subtle in getting rid of him rather than take Wayne on directly due to the length of his contractand lack of realistic suitors (no team in england would take him who can afford him and one Rooney himself would be interested in).
I can't see Jose being stupid enough to build a team round him and think he's going to lead us to success. You don't spend 6 months out analysing us and come to the conclusion that Rooney is a worthy starter for a team with EPL and CL aspirations.
Keep him on board until the contract wears down and once we have more leverage on our side.. we can get rid.
What is this Jose analysing our team for 6 months thing?
Is it just wishful thinking from fans or did he say anything?
Is it just wishful thinking from fans or did he say anything?
Mourinho might want to play him, but I'm positive he won't hesitate to drop him when he starts putting in similar performances like beginning of last season. No more 2/3 full shite months of 'playing him into form'. That's a luxury that JM won't be able to afford.
We look at rooney's ball retention and technique is one of the worst, always guilty of giving the ball away, playing him in midfield seems the worst decision anyone could make.
Wayne Rooney sees benefit of moving backwards to go forward with England
• Captain to adopt midfield role alongside Dele Alli in attacking lineup
• "I feel, with my football intelligence, I can play there and further my career."
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/jun/10/wayne-rooney-england-russia-european-championship
• Captain to adopt midfield role alongside Dele Alli in attacking lineup
• "I feel, with my football intelligence, I can play there and further my career."
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/jun/10/wayne-rooney-england-russia-european-championship
We live in hope.
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