I know... but even that is a bit ridiculous. Rooney has no power over Jose. Mourinho is free to do as he pleases.
First, the club manager's hands can be tied by a player's contract. I recall it was said that in Thiago Alcantara's contract there was clause that allowed him to be sold at a lower fee if he didn't get a minimum number of playing minutes. Now, I am not saying that it is the case but neither is it too far fetched to suggest Rooney might have some "minimum playing time clause" in his contract. Remember this was a 6-year contract signed and agreed by Moyes. It is not outlandish to think Moyes found a familiar, senior, well-respected figure in Rooney and chose to commit to Rooney's contract. He seemed to think that he would have 6 years and gave Rooney the same, perhaps.
Second, the media. In many of the criticisms that came out over the past 3 years. Regardless of how crap the team or Rooney was, the media never criticised Rooney or he (and a few others such as Carrick) were somehow usually painted in positive light. In the Euros, Rooney was crap but criticisms were hardly directed at him. Last week at Bournemouth, you could say he was poor or average, but certainly not "Superb" as Danny Murphy put it. It does make you wonder, how he gets all these free passes with the media.
Third, maybe it isn't Rooney that is political or manipulative. Maybe it is his agent, I don't know. I only know SAF really disliked his agent but then again SAF disliked most agents.
Fourth, bringing politics into the discussion is not low. Politics are everywhere and govern every aspect of life, to deny its existence or influence is being obtuse. Conspiracy theories are often far-fetched and absurd, but this Rooney situation isn't really a conspiracy, it's simply about the balance of power in the club and amongst the players.
Rooney is one of my favorite players at the club and I have about 5 kits with his name. I feel sad that he is mostly very much under par these days and I don't think he deserves his spot in the starting eleven currently. Someone argued that maybe guys like us with such opinions know nothing because obviously 3 managers have picked him so he must contribute something, also because Jose is ruthless enough to drop him so if he isn't dropped he must be doing something right.
That may be true, but at the same time there could be other reasons, perhaps contractual why the 3 managers can't drop him.
Anyway as I wrote in another post, i think Jose will drop him. Jose is simply plotting right now and setting the stage. Rooney has been pigeonholed into only one role now thus his possible excuses are limited. If Rooney thrives, great; otherwise there should be no hiding away from poor performances. Also we start to see Rooney being substituted, it is 3 games now that he has passed his armband to someone. The fans and media are visually conditioned to see Rooney leave the match before 90 minutes and to give his captaincy away.
Happy to be called stupid or crazy, but I predict that we are going to see a lot of incidences of Rooney being substituted even if he plays alright (something that hardly happened with the previous 2 managers). First it will be with a few minutes of the game left then progressively he will be out with more time left in the game. Rooney needs to be gradually worked out of the first eleven. You do not simply and quickly remove a person like Rooney without uproar or harming your own political capital.
We can take it positively that Jose is trying to let a respected senior player play himself into form and paving the way for him to step down easier if it doesn't happen. Or we can view it as Jose slowly tightening a noose around him. In LVG and Moyes time we had no real replacements for Rooney, now we have possibly better substitutes for almost all the positions Rooney can play in. We also didn't really have a replacement "Commercial face" for Rooney. Now we have Ibra, Pogba and even Martial coming into his own, so even Rooney's strength on the commercial front is waning.
Anyway, he played much better against Southampton than at Bournemouth, but nowhere near the standards required. Hope he improves else it is only fair he is out.
10
Literally one of the worst individual performances I can remember from one of ours in a long time, literally couldn't do anything right.
