A lot of bad press is given to Wayne Rooney, sometimes unfairly and the player has a lot of people saying he is over rated and does not deserve to be England captain.
The player had shown a lot of early promise in his career after making a big impact for his boyhood team Everton as a sixteen year old. He was playing some outstanding football from the word go and scored a lot of important goals for the Merseyside club, including a whopper of a goal against Arsenal for which I think he went down in history for. After only two season at Everton, scoring fifteen goals in sixty seven appearances, he was signed by Manchester United for a £25.6million transfer fee.
He had a promising start to his career at Manchester United and justified the move becoming United’s top scorer that season with eleven goals. He started to get a bit of a reputation for the wrong reasons however, with his bad temper and poor discipline becoming a regular feature in the newspapers and a and attitude was clearly visible at times like when he was needlessly sent off in September 2005 against Villareal in a game which ended goalless, when he was booked he sarcastically applauded the referee and bagged himself a second yellow. It seemed the youngster, for all the talent and promise he had, it was over shadowed by his silly behaviour and bad attitude, coming across as a bit of a wild child who was in serious need of piping down and being tamed by the mighty Sir Alex Ferguson.
His international career followed suit in similar fashion, with some promising goals and good play from the forward being marred by a shoddy disciplinary record and more bad press in the papers.
The most famous scandal was of course about his apparent taste for ;mature’ women with a story breaking that he had sexual relations with an elderly prostitute. He sadly became a bit of a laughing stock and people started to lose patience with the player who would continue to get himself in trouble on and off the pitch. What followed was a goalless period in the 2006/2007 season where he went ten games without scoring, until hitting the back of the net three times against Bolton to earn himself a two year contract extension.
For me, I think that a combination of bad press (some of it justified) and his previously poor attitude has earned the new England captain a bad name, more attention is focused on him as a person than as a player. But not only that, he has failed to perform for his country in recent years as a goal scorer and he hasn’t really been that great for his club either. But I think that he is most definitely NOT over rated. The guy has a bag full of talent; that much was obvious from the word go when he was at Everton and scoring top drawer goals, providing vital assists for his team mates, and he has continued to play like that throughout his career with some truly memorable goals being bagged in the process.
The general consensus is that Rooney is used in the wrong way as a player. He is consistently played in the number ten role behind a striker, and at times by Fergie he would be used on the wing. Both England and United are missing out on the best of Wayne because he isn’t used in the way he should be used, which is as natural number nine. He played in that role for Everton and he would hassle and bully defenders, win headers and get himself on the scoresheet regularly.
He is one of the best strikers in the game in that role and I would go as far as comparing him to Alan Shearer, who played that role superbly throughout his entire career as a player. Rooney is not utilised in that way these days and, despite glimpses of his genius, we do not see him living up to his full potential . As a result, he is classed as over rated by many and continues to get a lot of stick by fans and pundits alike.
Rooney will lead England out tonight against Switzerland in the Euro 2016 qualifier. Let’s hope Hodgson has read this and plays him as a number nine tonight.
