I have always been pleased to see Rooney in the line-up, but after RVP last season, i realise that Rooney is not the world class striker i thought he was and to get in the team alongside RVP, he has to be a better no.10 than Mata or Kagawa which he is not, they are so much more comfortable in possession than him, link up play a lot better, have better first touches and do not lose the ball as regularly as Rooney does, so realistically, Rooney should be challenging RVP for that No.9 Spot in the team and not having to be accommodated into the lineup thereby shunting Mata or Kagawa out wide. For a 27/28 year old who should be at the absolute peak of his powers and who was once thought of as better than CR7 he has not fulfilled his potential and I feel that utd have been too hasty in giving him that new contract as he has never really delivered for utd when absolutely necessary, maybe it is time the club went in a different direction and build the new team around Mata.
If the question is, what player has lost his mojo? Then Rooney is the answer. Tbf, he was playing through an injury tonight and you can't judge him on that alone, but look at Mata playing that number 10 role, as a proper AM. Not a second striker trying to be an attacking midfielder.
my question is if he was injured, why did he start the game, Chicharito is good enough to start the game and might have done better with either of those chances Rooney messed up
If the question is which incredibly overrated scouser has held his club to ransom twice and is performing in Europe like a portly versionRalphy Milne,then yes,yes it is
He's still a massive player for us. Also, if you're Moyes are you really not going to play Rooney and risk losing without him??? Imagine the backlash. I agree with you though. Kagawa could have played AM. Had Welbeck left and Valencia/Januzaj/Nani right, and then Chico up front. I can only imagine he needed Rooney bcos he'll run around like a madman and defend when needed. It's a shame we conceded so early, otherwise a couple of decent subs at that point may have got us a result.
I think next season Rooney, RVP and Hernandez should be fighting it out for 1 position, and Mata should be played in his number 10 position every game, and not played out wide to accommodate anyone. Mata is a much more creative and skilful player than anyone else in our squad, so the team should be built around him. I said at the time that I wasn't happy with the new contract that Rooney got, as we should have just let Chelsea have him. We would have saved ourselves a fortune, as we have 2 players in RVP and Hernandez who IMO are better number 9s. Rooney is a more complete all round player than both, but I think as a number 9 RVP and Hernandez are better goal scorers. Look at how well Hernandez played with Mata at the weekend, he is the ideal player infront of Mata, as he's such a predator in the 6 yard box, he gets on the end of everything. He also stretches teams which gives Mata the space to operate. I really do feel that Hernandez has been wrongly over looked for to long, not just by Moyes but by SAF to
Great insight, After watching the games against Villa, West Ham and Newcastle, you can easily observe the understanding between Mata and Kagawa, how extremely comfortable in possession they are and how creative they are, but the most important aspect of their games is that they hardly ever gift possession away and this is a problem utd have had for a very long time because Rooney as a no.10 gives away more possession than a normal no.10 should and the time has come for him to have to compete for his position in his team as a no.9 and who better to compete against than RVP and Chicharito because the no.10 spot should belong to Mata, Kagawa or Adnan
I can see Rooney being sold in the summer. I think the contract was designed to serve two purposes, first to keep the player himself onside and stop his behaviour from infecting the dressing room for this season and, secondly, to ensure we get maximum value from his sale. Last night proved two things, Rooney is never going to lay his life, heart and sole on the line for the club (if he didn't do it last night when it mattered, he never will) plus it showed that he is too inconsistent - he's at the heart of everything in one game, goes walkabout the next. We've pandered to his ego twice, now is the time to cut and run - you never know he may even have a good World Cup and we can ask mega-bucks for him.
He's been our best player this season along with De Gea. Taking a painkilling injection to play through the pain barrier in our biggest match of the season, knowing that you are putting your World Cup potentially at risk, and also knowing that he is ALWAYS the scapegoat for United and England when they lose, shows that he wasn't trying to hide. I think it's ridiculous that fans are trying to lay the blame at his feet. We knew he wasn't at a 100% last night and experience has shown us that Rooney always struggles when not 100% fit (which is normal for most players, but especially for an all-energy player like him). Yet I still believe he was the right choice last night. Rooney at 80% still offered more from an all round perspective in a match where we were going to have to fight tooth and nail to get a result. Our only other option was Chicharito, who would never have offered the all round game we needed, or someone like Januzaj with Welbeck playing centrally. Neither of these would have had as much as an affect as Rooney imo. We needed physicality, work rate and power up front, hence the Valencia, Welbeck and Rooney trio. A smaller player might have been a better finisher than an injured Rooney, but I don't think we would've caused them enough problems to get those opportunities to finish off. My opinion I know, but it's all too easy to blame Rooney, which I think is short sighted and a cop-out. I realise some fans are always going to call for drastic changes after every negative result, and they are entitled to those views, but I certainly don't agree. Personally I don't think there should only be two mentalities for (most) United fans; "We're the best team in the world" or "We're useless, fire everyone and buy 10 new players".
I agree that we cannot blame Rooney. It was a risk worth taking even though he was not fully fit. When you are playing the CL champions, you need your big players and it is not as if we have a glut of those at the moment. He had a few chances which he would have converted were he fully fit. What yesterday showed was that we needed to have the equivalent of RVP and Rooney when they are not available. Plus a couple of top midfielders and a whole backline.
Yeh blame Rooney. He clearly picked himself to play and hes clearly not do everything else he has done this season.... like keep some fight at the club. Death to Rooney!
Rooney wasn't any good last night. Maybe it was the right choice or maybe it wasn't, one thing we can say though is you lost so more likely than not he was part of the problem. I think you guys would have been better with Hernandez to really stretch that defence. The only time you guys looked like causing them problems were the balls in behind. Rooney had the one opportunity against that highline and he fluffed that up not passing to kagawa or testing the keeper himself. Yes he might have done better at 100% but the fact is he was not. Neither is he going to be that runner going in behind because that isn't his game. The reason rooney is getting the blame is because he messed that chance up and he messed up the cut back from welbeck that could have been 2-1. Lets not forget, without rooney recently, Man U have been dominating teams in the premier league.
Go back in time to when Rooney joined utd in 2004 and when he was the main focal point of the team, utd did not win any trophies until 06/07 after the infamous wink at the world cup and Ronaldo finally came out of his shell and became the dominant player in the league seeming to thrive on the hatred of fans around the country and becoming the focal point of the team and best player in the country for the next three seasons helping utd win 3 successive league titles as well as getting to two champions league finals and winning a balon dor' in the process. When he finally left in 2009, it became Rooney's chance to have the team built around him again and on a personal level he did not disappoint in the 09/10 season scoring 34 goals in all competition, but the club failed to win any trophies. The next season 10/11, after a poor world cup he came back unfit, was dropped and sent to Portland to get fit and basically had a fractured season, so the team had to come together and play without their talisman for a while getting world class production from the likes of Nani, Berbatov and Vidic instead to clinch the title, whilst Rooney was busy saying the team did not match his ambition and was basically a bit part player that season. The next season 11/12 with a new contract in tow Rooney was again the focal point of the team and once again he did not dissapoint scoring 34 goals in all competition again but again utd did not win any trophies. SAF then brought in RVP the next season 12/13 and he became the focal point of the team and utd won the league comfortably by 11 points. All of a sudden The pattern emerges, when Rooney has the team built around him, utd has never won any trophies but the trophies have come when the team has been built around the likes of CR7, RVP, and the season when Berbatov and Nani were the outstanding players, and that has me wondering once again this season when Rooney has been the best player in the team, does he actually make any of the players around him better because when he is usually the best performer in the team, utd have a history of not winning any titles and maybe the time has come to build the team around the likes of Mata because utd's best performances this season have been when Mata has been the chief creator in the team and his understanding with Kagawa seems like a foundation you can build the future of the club on and if Rooney competes for the no.9 position with RVP and Chicharito and wins out then he deserves to be the starter and not because he is the so called talisman of the team and getting a start like yesterday even though he was unfit to start and should have been on the bench.
We can agree to disagree about Hernandez, I don't think Bayern Munich away was a match where you could afford to have your striker sitting high up the pitch waiting for throughballs. Without Rooney tracking back like a maniac we would've had even fewer counterattack chances, and any throughballs from deep would've been hit-and-hope ones where Hernandez would likely just get muscled off the ball. He's not a Welbeck that can make something out of those kind of balls. I agree if we had some semblance of control over the midfield then he would be much more effective running onto clever balls from Kagawa etc, but it wasn't that kind of match. Erm, Bayern Munich are very different to the bottom half teams in the Premier League. We've been dominated by the top PL teams, and Bayern are way better than them even...
Unless you are Messi or Ronaldo you can't win a match single handedly. Basically what you are saying is that Rooney needs someone to share the burden of goalscoring with, especially since he isn't a typically goalscoring machine as he gets involved in the buildup so much. The same thing happened with Ruud, he was a great goalscorer but you need the team to contribute as well. It is too easy for a team to double up on one outstanding player (eg Bale) if all the play goes through that player. Suarez and Sturridge are a good example, as soon as you give the opponents multiple threats to consider then it makes you a lot more dangerous. It fascinates me that people are so quick to lay all the blame on Rooney, I don't mean you in particular but the press especially love it. I know he's our biggest earner and the big hope for England so it generates all the media hype, but there's much more to a team than one player. Ask UIR, he might mention that the manager plays a role too
You make a valid point but i keep going back to the 2010/2011 season when Rooney was not much of a factor and as a result utd played more as a team and multiple players e.g. Vidic, Nani, Berbatov were the most influential players in winning the league title and not Rooney who was out of sorts that season. My point being that when Rooney is the main man, utd have never won the title
