Rooney

[RobM]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/40510938

Wayne Rooney returns to Everton.

[Lang Spoon]

You can't never go home again. This could be as awful as Fowler's return. Maybe he'll be at Sellick next season, if they'll have him.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Whatever happens, I'm sure that most of the coverage is written already. It's difficult reading many of the articles about him to detect that he was a crucial attacking player in perhaps the most dominant team to ever play in england, at a time when England frequently had three semi finalists in the champions league, or that he was the best english attacking player since bobby Charlton.

I had an interesting chat with someone who claimed that Rooney's 27 goals in the league in 2011-12 didn't matter because his performance in one game against Man city cost man utd the league, and that he was responsible for man utd bottling the title. Aside from the problematic nature of claiming that a team that had won four of the previous five league titles, and would win the next one had bottled it, I thought it was a rather unusual loading of a teams failings exclusively onto one player. Particularly when he had scored at least two goals against seven of the nine other top half teams, and scored two at man city in the FA cup. (Newcastle were the only team he didn't score two against) This cut no ice. His performance against Man city was so bad that it cost Man utd the title. It didn't matter that before man utd dropped 8 points in the last six games, that they had won 10 of their previous eleven, drawing the other. Nor did it matter that Wayne Rooney scored 5 times in three of those final six games. or 9 times in the previous eleven, Nor did it matter that up until aguero's injury time winner, rooney's goal against Sunderland looked like winning man utd the league. it didn't matter.

Now that's an extreme case, but i don't think there's ever been a player who has received so little appreciation relative to his role in an unprecedented era of success, or taken so much of the blame personally when that success stopped, or when it never happened for England. There are a surprising number of people in england who think it was all downhill for wayne rooney after Euro 2004. There's an awful lot of england fans out there with a lot of anger towards wayne rooney because he didn't single handedly drag them to an international tournament victory like Maradona. But as we've discussed before, English football is obsessed with the idea of the magic individual.

There's also an awful lot of weirdness about what man utd paid wayne rooney. Wayne Rooney is rather unique in that he is the only player that I know of where people add the money he received for Image rights, to his "Footballing wage" to arrive at the figure of £300k a week. If he was on the same deal at Barcelona, people would say he earned £150K a week. The other thing is that Man utd paid him £8 million a year, to use those rights as the footballing cornerstone of the biggest commercial sponsorship operation in football. It's a very small proportion of the money that man utd made from this source. If man utd are still paying rooney, it will because they agreed to pay him a set amount for his image rights.

[hobbes]

Rooney was a very good player once. He wasn't any better than that, but that's OK. Not many players are.
Best since Bobby Charlton is a bit of a stretch perhaps, but you can be forgiven some hyperbole.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Rooney's hairline tracks back quicker than he does.

#EPL #epicbantz

[Patrick Thistle]

No doubt Rooney was a very good player. Mind you, I saw him at Gay Meadow in Everton blue and Salop journeyman Pete Wilding kept the wunderkind in his pocket.

Also saw him play for England at the Millennium Stadium before the hair transplant. From the top level he was clearly balding.

But, yeah, an under-appreciated player of late. Which kind of shows how desperately entitled many Man Utd fans are more than anything else.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I think that one of the big problems with Wayne rooney is that most people literally have no idea what kind of player Wayne rooney actually was, or what he was trying to do on the pitch. Not Even Paul stretford had a fucking clue. Rooney played in a variety of positions, in a variety of tactical systems and he did the thing that all man utd players who hung around for more than a season or two. He adapted his game to fit into the team's requirements. This isn't the norm in the English game, and most people view it as a betrayal of your talent to become something more than a one dimensional provider of magical moments.

[Bored Of Education]

Rooney's hairline tracks back quicker than he does.

#EPL #epicbantz

The problem with that sort of epicbantz is that tracking back is exactly one of Rooney's problems. I remember seeing an England match and the commentators were saying "Look at Rooney, tracking back and helping his defence in the left back position" and, I thought, you don't want him there, you want him further up the field to start an attack when the ball gets cleared or dispossessed off the opposition. He fell for all that blood, guts and heart Captain Marvel bullshit that that goes on over here. If he had been an Italian or Spanish player, they would have asked what the fuck he was doing back there and to get upfield.

I remember seeing Rooney in the flesh at Old Trafford but for England against Wales in our first international against them for donkeys' years. Even though the match was ridden with the expected rivalry, I was quite looking forward to seeing Rooney in the flesh. It was just after his granny-shagging incident . for which he got the expected abuse - but he was still a reasonably nascent talent and it felt, to those of us that hadn't seen it, a bit like seeing a Gascoigne at the start of his career. Although he didn't score, Rooney had a good game but nothing particularly spectacular performance against a fairly workmanlike Welsh side. He had just signed for Man Utd but, in some ways, that stultified his potential, I think. He was on big money, assured of a place in their team and England (until recently, obviously) and, I know it sounds weird, but could have done more. I would have liked to have seen him play abroad and add to his game. I mean, obviously, it means nothing to me but you do like to see good players and, while Rooney is no doubt good and talented, I think he could have done much more.

I can't believe he has been at Man Utd for 13 years. Everton, at the time, were being criticised for being a selling club. I wonder if their supporters are happy that they are buying in this case.

[Simon G]

I genuinely believe the criticism of Rooney stems from the fact that he didn't go on to be the best player in the World. At Euro 2004, and in the just under 2 years beforehand, he'd broken onto the scene at an extent that I can't recall in my own lifetime. I'm a bit too young for Gazza in 1990, but I imagine it was very similar. When he got injured against Portugal in the quarter-final it genuinely felt, at the time, that was England's chance gone (and so it proved).

He apparently having a poor record with England at tournaments never really washed with me either. He was never fully fit for the 06 World Cup and he seemed to be trying too hard in tournaments afterwards to make up for his sending off against Portugal.

Rooney has raw talent, there's little he can't do with a football, and at Euro 2004 England fans finally had someone they could see going onto greatness. The fact he's achieved as much as he has pales into insignificance to most England supporting pundits/fans because, by and large, England have been shite. Being the superstar player of the squad means he gets the blame for it. Someone else has already said it, Rooney was expected to win England a trophy on his own and the fact he didn't means he will forever be criminally underrated.

I like that he's gone back to Everton and not gone over to China or the USA, and I really hope he wins something with them. You somewhat get the feeling that winning an FA Cup with Everton will mean almost as much, if not more, than winning the Champions League with United.

[anton pulisov]

Rooney played in a variety of positions, in a variety of tactical systems and he did the thing that all man utd players who hung around for more than a season or two.

Very true, he played in many positions when asked, and successfully gave away possession in all of them.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

In what way could he have done more? He played international football for england, so that's a fucking huge limiter right there. But despite that he's their record scorer. he won five premier league medals. he got within a point and goal difference of two more, and he had another more distant second. He played in three European cup finals and scored one cracking goal. He's man utd's record goalscorer. despite playing more seasons on the wing than as the centre forward.

I'm not sure what playing abroad would have achieved, other than to enable him to pad up his youtube reel in a league where defenders are three inches shorter, a stone lighter, and you frequently play against whole teams who earn less than you do. The thing is that most other leagues are just something for superclubs to pass the time, while they wait for the business end of the champions league. There are two spanish teams in the top 10 richest clubs in the world, there's one in france, and there's one in germany. This year there will be six in england. These teams play 30 games against each other. It's difficult to make a case to move abroad on the grounds of competitive football.

It might have done his trophy count some good to move abroad in 2013 given what happened to man utd next, but I'm not sure that it would have added to him as a player. he would just have been playing in a better team than the one he was currently at. He could also move in 2013, because before that he was limited to living in the north west, because his sister in law was severely disabled, and his wife spent several days a week with her (which is why it was Man City he spoke to when he got the hump at earning half of what nine man city players were getting while having to carry the team's attack almost entirely by himself.)

It would also have allowed a whole bunch of people to suddenly admit to themselves that he was a lot better than they had been letting on, now that he played for a top foreign club a) essentially because of cultural snobbery and b) a lot of people don't like man utd, and wayne rooney's goals only brought them pain. But also he personally seems to have taken an awful lot of the blame for man utd dropping from champions to sixth in four years. It turns out that most football fans are little different to a bronze age pagan who follows a chief that they elect to ensure a good harvest. He goes through the rituals, and if things go well and the harvest is good, then life is pretty sweet. But if there's a bad winter, or the harvest fails, he gets brutally and ritually murdered and gets thrown in a bog, or at a boundary. Even though the rules governing the success of the harvest or football are a bit more subtle than that.

the thing is that for a top player, playing for all the top clubs in all the leagues is basically the same. They all swap managers across leagues, they all swap players around between them. They all swap coaches around between them, football at the top end is completely globalized. One of the bizarrest things to come out of the Suarez-Evra fiasco was that a large group of man utd players spoke a creole of spanish and portuguese to each other. The Reason it came up was it was in this language that Antonio Valencia explained to Patrice Evra the difference between "Negro" in spanish and Italian. I mean at man utd Rooney was primarily coached by Carlos Quierroz in the dark arts of shit on a stick football, then they had a high tempo dutch 4-2-3-1 under rene meulensteen, and then Van Gaal was trying to teach them how to play like Ajax, or barcelona or Bayern munich. That's literally every tactical system employed by top level european clubs. And if you wait around long enough, the best manager in every league will turn up sooner or later with their way of playing so you'll encounter literally everything at some point.

Anyway here's 250 wayne rooney goals. it's only 33 minutes long, but it's well worth watching

[NickSTFU]

Mind you, I saw him at Gay Meadow in Everton blue and Salop journeyman Pete Wilding kept the wunderkind in his pocket.

Pete 'the feet' Wilding was no journeyman, he only had 3 clubs.

I think a more apt description would be "kept in his pocket by an ex-Sunday league plasterer."

[steveeeeeeeee]

He's tecnically very capable and very strong. But 13 years ago he was also very fast , which made the difference. I saw him in the flesh against France in 2004, when he got the ball, he ran directly at goal with it and basically caused chaos and panic. Really unique, far more dangerous than Ronaldo as Rooney attacked the center rather than the wings.

Much like Michael Owen, there's only so long you can play like that until it's kicked out of you. Unlike Michael Owen, Rooney remained a useful player until his late twenties. However, his legacy will be tainted because he was never really a leader or captain, but insisted he was.

[Patrick Thistle]

Re the "granny-shagging incident" wasn't the "granny" in question only aged about 39 or something?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

She was the receptionist at a liverpool brothel who wouldn't sell her story to the sun, so they printed the story in the knowledge that they couldn't be sued,

[Ray de Galles]

Pete 'the feet' Wilding was no journeyman, he only had 3 clubs.

I think a more apt description would be "kept in his pocket by an ex-Sunday league plasterer."

He was also once kept very quiet in an England v Wales Euros qualifier at Wembley in 2011 by Darcy Blake - who then went on to crash out of pro football aged 25 and was last seen playing rugby for New Tredegar seconds in the Gwent, Newport and Pontypool District League.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

He's tecnically very capable and very strong. But 13 years ago he was also very fast , which made the difference. I saw him in the flesh against France in 2004, when he got the ball, he ran directly at goal with it and basically caused chaos and panic. Really unique, far more dangerous than Ronaldo as Rooney attacked the center rather than the wings.

Much like Michael Owen, there's only so long you can play like that until it's kicked out of you. Unlike Michael Owen, Rooney remained a useful player until his late twenties. However, his legacy will be tainted because he was never really a leader or captain, but insisted he was.

I think there's a couple of things to unpick there. Back when he burst on the scene, It wasn't so much that he was incredibly fast, it's that by the standards of today, everyone else was quite slow and didn't run around very much. A couple of months ago I was watching the Arsenal 1-2 man utd game where you have vieira and keane strangling each other, and Keane scoring two goals. The full backs didn't cross the halfway line once. It was all relatively static, and it looked completely different to football today. That's just two years before Rooney's debut. Rooney wasn't explosively fast in the way that we'd use that term today, he was just faster than the players around him, and able to run quite fast over much longer distances. These are two things that have changed radically across the board in the intervening period. The average running stats for a forward now are not very different to what made rooney stand out in 2004.

The other thing is that if you watch all the early goals he scored for man utd, virtually none of them involve him running at anything near top pace. (It's really hard to score when you're running at full pelt) they all either involve him running unmolested into space, or at a player who is standing still, or they involve him getting the drop on static defenders, so that by the time they realize that the ball is going to rooney, he's already cruising past them, and they have to turn around and accelerate from a standing start. It's not so much that he's running really fast, usually they're not aware that they need to start running until it's too late. There were a couple of players around that time who were actually blessed with supernatural speed who are still playing today, and I am amazed to see how they actually got faster and faster, and how quickly they can recover full form after a surprisingly short periods of time out through injury.

You can see examples of what I'm talking about in the four goals he scored at Euro 2004 His first is a header from a standing start. His second involves him cruising up in support of vassell, he's standing completely still in space for the third, and if you look at the fourth goal where he runs through on goal, you can see that he's running nowhere near top speed. It's just that the defender doesn't know what is happening, and is catching up as rooney rolls the ball into the corner.

Even in the France game You rarely see him at anything approaching a full sprint What you do see is an awful lot of aggression and two red card worthy offences. By far the most noteworthy positive thing you see is him getting the drop on Lilian thuram and accelerating away from him, but Thuram was 32 years old, and well past his athletic prime, and caught on the wrong side. If you want to see someone run really fast, pay attention to thierry henry getting back to cover and save mikael silvestre from a red card.

[caja-dglh]

Re the "granny-shagging incident" wasn't the "granny" in question only aged about 39 or something?

It is a brothel in Liverpool, so 39 isn't really the lower bound on being a Liverpool Grandma.

[Bored Of Education]

Bloody hell, TAB, keep your hair on. I gave a fairly benign view, am not necessarily having a pop at him for not doing it and you have pretty much elaborated the reasons why it would be good for him - "It might have done his trophy count some good to move abroad in 2013", "he would just have been playing in a better team than the one he was currently at.". Part of the reason that I said about him moving abroad is that, until now, he wouldn't have moved anywhere else in England (I didn't know about the Man City talks).

[ursus arctos]

Bloody hell, TAB, keep your hair on.

Erm

[Bored Of Education]

Oops, is that a sensitive subject?

[Lang Spoon]

Hmm.. I don't think I have any specific mental image for TAB, but whatever nebulous "voice" I read his posts in, I'd say that amorphous cloud had a full head of hair. Maybe subconscious slippage from Garcia's tv career. What with him and Berba being the same person like.

[Bored Of Education]

Hold on, I tihnk I am friends with TAB on Facebook and he has a full head of hair, I am sure.

[caja-dglh]

This is getting more fun. Bored clearly doesn't know who TAB is.

[Sam]

That's, er, not TAB in TAB's Facebook profile picture, Bored ... And at least according to the mutual friends box on my Facebook, you're not friends with him on there.

Anyway, Rooney. So long, and thanks for all the goals. Hope it goes well for him at Everton.