Wayne Rooney

robthered

I always wondered...

I guess not that surprising with the new information.

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber

A. But Pogue and IK would brand you a liar

Plechazunga

Why am I always having to explain this?

The one on my face is a fecking NOSE.

CnutOfAllCnuts

We know that.

But the two between your legs can't be called noses.

Did the kids at school bully you for your huge nose, two cocks and one testicle?

Plechazunga

No, they were quite frightened.

CnutOfAllCnuts

Of course, I remember, your parents sent you to an all-girls school.

Plechazunga

Of course you remember, you were one of the girls

In fact, I seem to remember shoving my left cock in your ear in double maths

CnutOfAllCnuts

You're mistaking me for my twin brother, CockOfAllCocks.

I didn't go to school, I grew up on a hedgehog farm.

robthered

But back to topic Plech, given that you had the natural attribute of two cocks did you find that you could improve your use of them?

Perhaps to answer this question you could have treated your two cocks separately, practiced with one whilst leaving the other to it's natural ability.

Dippersripper

Well done Plech and Cnut, you gave some direction to the pointless thread. Shame you couldn't do it with the Hargreaves thread.

malcolm31337

I love epic threads.

ooeat0meoo

I wonder if Christiano Ronaldo fucks with Wayne by saying things like, 'Come on, Wayne... don't bust my balls!'

CnutOfAllCnuts

Is it a wet dream of yours?

Pogue Mahone

Erm... No I didn't say that. I said it can continue to be improved up until the point at which you start to decline physically. Which is around about the mid to late twenties.

Then you've got a few years where some attributes continue to improve while others start to decline, some more rapidly than others. Next thing you know, you're in your mid-thirties, a decrepit old fart like me, literally everything starts going south (apart from the grey matter, for another few decades anyway) and it's all downhill from there.

What is total bollox is this concept of a glass ceiling where a player - who is training his nuts off, whilst maturing physically and constantly getting stronger, quicker and more practised at what he does - suddenly finds that specific aspects of his game starts to stagnate, for no other reason than he's apparently reached the limit of his "natural talent"

The limitless improvement thingy was only ever hypothetical and based on Plech's age-defying magic pills.

fredthered

Rooney will never be our main scorer.

He is an IMPORTANT goal scorer, but he isnt the main person who United rely on to score and he never has been. More importantly he never will be.

fredthered

Natural ability cannot be improved.

What can be improved is the way you apply that ability to the skills you are shown.

A player can be naturally gifted, but if he cant use that ability with the skills required then he is useless. Likewise you can play by the book and be the perfect player in terms of doing as asked, but without natural ability then once again it wont work.

Knowledge and skill come with experience.

Ability is something you are born with and it stays with you till you die.

Instant Karma

Don16

Dave fucking Kitson has more goals this season in the league than Rooney, and Marcus Bent has just 1 less. If this doesn't tell Fergie that Rooney is not an out and out goalscorer nothing will.

And yes, I know he was injured and stuff, but I think absolutely anybody who watches football can agree Rooney needs to play off somebody.

Instant Karma

Utter bollocks....Rooney not scoring lot of goals has nothing to do with the absence of another striker or where he is played. He has had so many chances and missed them. His finishing needs to improve and it will.

Pogue Mahone

Yes it can.

Ronaldo was born with tremendous natural ability but he wouldn't be half the player he is now if he didn't work his bollox off in training, week in, week out.

This whole argument is going round in circles.

Put it this way, I don't know if any of you ever get the chance to talk to professional athletes (who play any sport) but if you do, ask them if they think there's a single element of their game that doesn't respond to hard work in training?

Every elite athlete has only reached the levels they did because they work at their game and constantly seek to improve in everything they do. And if they don't constantly improve their game they will get left behind.

What's really amazing is when you get players who reach phenomenal heights without ever really grafting. Cause that poses the question of just how good they could have been with the right amount of application?

I always think of George Best when Fergie mentions the amount of work that Ronaldo and Rooney put in training. People are already comparing Ronaldo to best but if Best had trained as hard as modern footballers (or even as hard as his more dedicated peers) there would be no comparison and he would be head and shoulders the best footballer to have ever walked the planet. By a country mile.

Don16

True. But I think he will score more goals playing off a bigger man. Would you agree? I don't really think his greatest football has come from playing as the focal point of our attack.

Instant Karma

So far...but it doesn't mean that is how it will always be.

Don16

Yeah, but why fix something thats not broken?

pillory

Separating ability from skill is confusing the issue, IMO. Ability = skill. Some are born with good skills (coordination, physique, etc), and being born with good skills makes it easier to further develop those (or other) skills. 'Natural ability' is not a constant, but a starting point.

Instant Karma

To help the team win perhaps ? It was broken earlier when we won nothing and its actually fixed now.

crappycraperson

We will see.

jojojo

Not quite true. George described learning to trap a ball by kicking it against a flight of steps knowing it would fly back at awkward angles. I watched him (on his own) slamming the ball at numbered squares marked on a gym wall and I watched him practise curling corner kicks over and over again. He was serious about the skills - but the fitness? I guess it didn't seem like such a big deal when he was 20 or so - not only was he faster and more flexible than his opponents he was faster and more flexible than his teammates. By the time that wasn't true anymore it was too late and he had too many problems.

KingEric7

You are describing an improvement in Ronaldo's skill level and the difference between ability and skill must be distinguished here.
Ability is innate. It is permanent and unchanging and as a result, it limits the skill level of a player. Ronaldo was born with incredible ability, and even if he had never taken up football, he would still have an unbelievable level of potential. However, it would've been raw and unworked on, as his skill level would've been poor.
Skill is applying the ability that you have. This can be improved, but it will always be limited by a performer's ability.

pillory

Someone define 'ability', please.