While this was an excellent decision I'm not sure I buy this whole narrative of Rooney being chucked out by Jose. I think he'll be an important player this season and Jose will start him in plenty of PL games. I'd like to see him marginalised to be honest, but I'm still not convinced this is "the start of the end" as opposed to "a wake up call".
Rooney Dropped | Megathread closed
- Thread starter wr8_utd
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imagine if LVG done the sensible thing and just dropped him in the period where he was blatantly terrible. One more win, he would still be in a job. Then when sacked the leaked stories about how Rooney was shackled by tactics etc
This article sums it up for me. He'll never be a legend in my eyes.
You've picked this season where most people agree it's coming to an end, an end that probably started end of fergie last last season.
How was he through the vast majority of his career? Outstanding, even under moyes at Everton when he was just 16 he was a talent.
I could pick any player and find their last season's where they weren't as good doesn't mean they weren't good in their prime!
Sorry I can't decipher your reply. Take a deep breath and try again.
Agreed but one he wasn't on set piece duty throughout his career ronaldo was on penalties and ruud at the start of his career.
I quoted you because you were agreeing with a post that said Rooney has never been a great player for us which is total nonsense.
I'm not saying it makes him a great player now I'm saying he has been a marvellous player for united and now needs to simmer down his career
Rooney is tarnishing his legacy with these subpar performances over the last few seasons. He'll probably break the record this season as we play some small teams in the cups but the whole saga may become increasingly tedious. For his own good he should do it soon. Otherwise, people will start to laugh at him.
He's a legend for his accomplishments but he simply will not be held highly in most fans hearts.
This is just a business relationship.He performs to meet out ambitions or should be shipped off.
This must be a very hard time for you.There's actually debate about Rooney and his legend status?
The second time, when Chelsea were chasing him, Mourinho kept prompting him to come out publicly and say he wants to leave United, which he never did. The only real mistake he did for me were the original shenanigans pulled on the first contract renewal, since then he's actually showed the club a lot of respect.
Players want to leave all the time, DDG for example was ready to shoot off to Madrid 2 summers ago, Evra asked to leave twice according to Sir Alex etc. Does it hurt their status? I don't think so.
I think once the dust settles perhaps Rooney will be looked back on more fondly than he is jsut now. He's certainly a club legend anyway.
Players want to leave all the time, DDG for example was ready to shoot off to Madrid 2 summers ago, Evra asked to leave twice according to Sir Alex etc. Does it hurt their status? I don't think so.
I think once the dust settles perhaps Rooney will be looked back on more fondly than he is jsut now. He's certainly a club legend anyway.
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One thing i don't understand about Rooney is why is his touch so bad, i might be wrong but earlier in his career i recall he had a decent touch/technique, although not brilliant but good enough to play for an elite club like ours. It has got so bad that it is not literally embarrassing that he can't control a ball when he is pressed and more often than not he gives the ball away.
I fully accept he would lose his pace, power and that determination he had earlier in his career but losing your touch seems something unheard of for me.
I fully accept he would lose his pace, power and that determination he had earlier in his career but losing your touch seems something unheard of for me.
I was banned once for calling David Moyes a dick. In hindsight, i realise, i was just ahead of my time.
A visionary!
Serves him right the demented fecker, if there is one guy that lost his job because of Rooney its him because as you say one more win and he'd have survived.
I got that vibe from the apologetic way Jose is trying to play down the decision to drop him, calling him my guy and stuff like that. If that happens then Woodward should start headhunting a new boss because we know exactly how it ends.
At the start of the season, Jose made it clear, he is a NO.9 OR NO.10.
These are strikers' positions.
Rooney is a striker. A non-scoring striker, but a striker none the less.
Come on, mate! This isn't even his worst period of the last three years. Last fall he went an obscene amount of games as the main striker without contributing to a single point on the scoreboard. Last fall was when everybody should have known he was never coming back to his best, he made watching the team I love into a painful duty. I felt physical distress when watching.
When he finally scored a goal during the christmas run, with his backheel from yet another Martial assist I cheered like crazy,but then the papers wrote "He's back" or some shite, and I felt like crying. (Remember Martial had to hit it hard on his foot while one yard from goal earlier that season to see Rooney make the scoreboard). What we're seing now is more of the same.
Wrt your condescending green smiley when someone suggests he's not a United legend, in their eyes, you're doing more harm than good to your own case. To me he is a club legend, simply for everything he's achieved in his time here, but he's never going to be as big as Evra for me, never mind the all time greats. Like some have already stated, this is a strictly business relationship for me after he called out the club. I loved the fact that Evra spoke out after that, Rooney grew up in the near vicinity of Manchester, but Evra understood what the club is all about.
Jose can say whatever he wants but you can still use your eyes and brains to see that Rooney's position and role hasn't changed one bit from under LVG (yeah he played a few games up front but most of the time he wasn't) and he wasn't considered a striker anymore. He isn't a striker, doesn't play like one, doesn't occupy the position of one and therefore you cannot expect him to have a scoring record of one. Managers are always speaking gospel truth. And 10 isn't a striker's position.
An educated guess says that Rooney has always performed best on instinct. He came into the PL at a young age, tons of momentum, everything was great for ages, not much reason to question what he was doing. These last few seasons there has been lots of criticism, some of which he will have been aware of. When feeling under pressure his brain doesn't respond as well, hence the ball going under his foot several times against Iceland, and the basic errors we've seen at times this season.
The first time he wanted to leave the club, his form was absolutely shocking. Even after signing the new deal it took a while for it to recover. If his mind is stressed then his body seems to lose much of it's technical quality. After the first summer event for England when he was superb, he has tended to under-perform in major finals for England; another stressful situation for him.
Rooney certainly isn't the only player where this has happened. Lee Martin looked a really good player until he scored an own goal for us that I seem to recall cost us in a game. After that he never looked United standard. More recently, McNair and Blackett both did ok until the first error, after which their confidence collapsed and they no longer looked United standard players. Gary Neville's form went to pieces after two back-pass errors cost us goals in Brazil (?)
Footballers need to go onto the pitch with a clear head and sufficient resilience to cope with the occasional mistake. It is probably sensible for the manager to take players out of the team before the press starts writing articles about their terrible form.
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Burned haha
I can't understand how a striker can take several months trying to score 3 goals starting every game.
I never questioned is whole career, just the past few years which is what matters, if someone give us the 2007 rooney model, would take him in a heart beat
To be honest, I'm not sure just how shit this Zorya team we are playing on Thursday are, but after defeat to Feyenoord, it is actually a must-win. I would not be surprised at all if Rooney starts as the number 9 and they deal with him comfortably.
It's sad to see it like this, but I wouldn't be surprised if Zlatan or Rashford need to be brought off the bench to get us through that one too.
It's sad to see it like this, but I wouldn't be surprised if Zlatan or Rashford need to be brought off the bench to get us through that one too.
If i was Mou id say that Rooney and Zlatan compete for no9 spot. I see only one winner here.
This is my worry too. If he can handle the game and we win - great but it is a must win. I can see us winning this tournament.
I have never really taken to him. I appreciated the player he was, but struggle to put him in the legend bracket when we have so many.
However, I do have some sympathy with him over those comments. We let Ronaldo and Tevez go and brought in Antonio Valencia. We did show a lack of ambition. He possibly didn't go about things the right way, but the sentiment of what he was saying was absolutely bang on. Id have a bit more respect for him if he'd been as open about the teams short falls and even his own performances over the last 2-3 years.
Anyway, he was dropped and Saturday performance vindicated the decision.
I have been waiting for us "to click" since LVG took over. Saturday we "clicked".
I though Watford was our rock bottom. I thought if Jose stuck with Rooney after that performance we'd go down the Liverpool route. However, with him out of the picture, or at least no longer un-droppable, I see us on an upward trajectory
Football sage Garth Crooks lauds Wayne Rooney for fulfilling the terms of his contract:
Football365 said:
While I don't disagree that this was regression from a team perspective, this particular move was the best thing that happened to Rooney. Valencia was pretty much his personal servant, and created many goals for him, without having the ability or the ambition to do things independently like Ronaldo.
On the whole, I agreed with his sentiments at the time though. He said exactly what most of the caf and every United fan was afraid of too. Personally, I have no issue against his contract situations. He was doing right by himself, and we are absolutely loaded anyway, so why not?
I just have a problem with the fact that he's shit. In fact, I don't even have a problem with the fact he's shit - it happens, he's burnt out, and we can handle it, we have better players. He's entitled to lose it. My main problem has been with years of people talking about him as if nothing has changed, and how he's still 'the most important player' etc, and how 'he can play any position', and 'if I'm picking the team, I'll always have Wayne Rooney in it' etc. That is the shit that pissed me off. I didn't get angry when Giggs could no longer run past full backs. He's entitled, he's old. The difference was, everyone,including Giggs, realised it. There was no denial of it. We've had years of denial regarding Rooney.
In hindsight, it was almost a self admission. "Look, im a good player but I am no Ronaldo, I need these players to take limelight and expectation off me".
P. Neville was saying the same thing the other day. I think Mourinho needs to look into the problem of player truancy, it is clearly a much bigger problem than many of us realise. How many players could be pushing for the first team but arent because they dont bother turning up for training or games?
It is remarkable what happens when people see someone as their hero or one of their heros - as it must be with many on here who can't grasp that Rooney is genuinely finished.
Not the same scenario but I felt devastated (for a 14 year old boy) when we sold Beckham to Madrid - genuinely shocked me despite the events leading up to it. Years on, I'm just indifferent to seeing stars fade away from United.
I struggle to wrap my mind around how people can't just call it like it is. It's over. He's been a remarkable signing but every match he plays when he's stinking the place up, ruins the memory of his best moments.
Not the same scenario but I felt devastated (for a 14 year old boy) when we sold Beckham to Madrid - genuinely shocked me despite the events leading up to it. Years on, I'm just indifferent to seeing stars fade away from United.
I struggle to wrap my mind around how people can't just call it like it is. It's over. He's been a remarkable signing but every match he plays when he's stinking the place up, ruins the memory of his best moments.
Agree. But in his best seasons personally the club was less successful. When there was another talisman in attack the team was more successful.
Due to his workrate and ability as an all rounder, he is better suited to not being the main man. Unfortunately, when that is his role, he sees it as "sacrificing himself for the team" when in fact it is playing to his strengths.
Gerrard was similar. He saw himself as the midfield general. His (and Liverpool's) best season was playing behind Torres with Alonso and Mascherano dictating things from midfield.
This pretty much sums it up for me. He used to be my favorite player pre 2010, but after that my feelings towards him went from "I don't care about him" to "I can't stand him".
I disagree with both of you, respectfully of course. I felt he clearly challenged the one man who was synonymous with Manchester United throughout my entire lifetime, and I remember SAF's reaction to it when confronted by the media, he seemed genuinely hurt by it.
I remember an article in a Norwegian newspaper at the time Rooney got the new contract, where the gist of it was that SAF had lost his most important battle in recent years, and that Rooney had cemented his power and position within the club. Pretty sure the author was a United fan.
Even if we disregard the totally obvious - and proven - view that Rooney only said those things to hide his real intentions, we simply can't have him acting like a manager would - Moyes revealed that Wayne "was always in his office, using DM's computer to pick out players he felt United should sign"; a bloody ridiculous situation which shows the weakness of Moyes and the entitlement of Rooney. Remember John Terry's attempted coup against Capello? Well, that kind of thing is what you get when senior players arrogantly assume they know best.
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