You have to respect Rooney as a player. I don't like him but he certainly has ability when playing for united. His work rate and goal and assists alone show that he's one of the premier leagues best strikers and he could walk into most teams in world football. Gerrard could walk into quite a few teams, as would Lampard too however the price tags, as you said are stupidly inflated. No way is Carroll worth, or ever going to be worth £35mill. It's the same with the likes of Henderson, Milner, Chamberlain, Carrick and Glen Johnson. All moved for stupidly high transfer fees despite the fact they're not worth it, or are going to be worth it. No it isn't, everyone knows that they're all good players but hardly any of them perform at international level which ultimately leads to the narrow minded view that these players are bad. If you look at it from a neutral view it's a lot easier to see that all of these players have quality, but some of them, like Rooney, fail to reach the heights for the national side as they do for their clubs.
Disagree. He raerly does it in the champions league either. He once went 2 seasons without scoring the CL and it barely got a mention.
You're sort of contradicting yourself. You say Rooney isn't a top player until he dominates a major international tournament, yet you won't let someone else say that you're not a top player until you play in the PL. Also, Aguero hasn't dominated a major international tournament, nor has Messi for that matter, so that argument has to go out of the window. Whatever the reason, whilst Rooney has played for England they haven't succeeded on the major international scene, so he (like the Argentinians mentioned above) can't really be judged solely on international football. I would suggest that Rooney is one of the top 3 in the role he plays. There aren't many deep-lying centre forwards who are as effective as him. Gerrard and Lampard the other two you mention are also up there in their respective roles, along with Ashley Cole. I think the issue is more a under-rating of certain foreign players, rather than an over-rating of our own players. If anything, the likes of Rooney, Gerrard, Lampard and Terry get a pretty raw deal from most fans and pundits. The key thing for me though is what yopu have mentioned, English football is so competitive that it has become massively defensive, so skillful attacking players can really struggle at times. Whereas years ago, or abroad, they would be amazing. I'd argue it's harder to impress in the PL than in any other league, due to the quality of the defences.
You can't judge a striker, especially Rooney purely on goals though. He contributes in other ways too like assists. I'm betting that although he may not have scored goals in these champions league seasons, he'd have more than made up for that with the amount of assists he'd have got instead.
Well yes and no. It is in the sense these players aren't crap, I'd definitely say that the likes of Cole and Rooney were easily one of the top 5 players on their role but I agree with him about the price tags and stuff. His silly opinion calling them **** is based on the national team being quite poo. Like you said, Messi and co haven't done anything on the international scene either but it doesn't make them bad players. Not every national side can be as good as Spain.
The transfer fee thing is a strange one. I don't quite understand why but nearly every manager is paying substantially more for English players at the moment, I'm sure they know what they're doing.
Just to clarify, I know I used the term 'International' but I did mean non-domestic competitons either for club or country. Perhaps I should have said continental.
Well then you're an idiot. Rooney's played brilliantly for Utd in the champions league and was pivotal in getting them to the final last season. Not every team is as good as Barcelona. In fact the only team that comes close to playing anything like them are Arsenal, and they're only half as good.
It's ridiculous that English players cost more. Heres value for money: Carroll- £35 million Fabregas- £25 million It makes no sense
Pretty sure it is mainly down to Uefa discussing bringing in more rules about a certain amount of players having to be from that squad, hence United signings Jones, Young Smalling etc.... preparing for life under the new rules. With their being a fairly low supply for quality Englishmen in comparison to quality foreigners the price of Englishmen is always going to be higher, therefore simple supply and demand formula. I can't be the only Economics student here surely?
If you look at it from the touchline view it looks very close. But I don't think all of the ball went over the line, just 90% of it
Who was that then ? I didn't see the game due to being at work. Whoever it was they can't be as bad as Mark Bright, now he is a proper bell end .
Correction to my last , it can be as bad . Gary Neville, Jesus ****ing wept. I might cancel my Sky , I'm not paying fifty odd quid a month to watch that tool . The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away . Andy Gray goes and that cock end comes in .
