He harried the defenders, chased back a lot and drove at the defense with the ball. He wasn't playing like a creative link between midfield and attack back then either. Sure, 18-year old Rooney was a different beast but back then he was a different player physically and that energy and drive was then best utilized by him being a supporting player to initially RvN and then Ronaldo. He said as much himself in a recent interview where he claimed that he'd become a smarter player by learning not to chase the ball all the time. That's why 2009/10 was such a big season for him - he finally looked like he was learning to keep the discipline and instead of chasing shadows he was using his energy more efficiently by attacking the box. Rooney's main issue playing up top has always been that he keeps dropping too deep to get involved in play and when he does that then he doesn't have the consistency of touch and vision to advance the play quick enough.
I'm pretty sure you have some of it the wrong way around. Maybe my memory has gone soft on me, but I have pretty vivid memories of a younger Rooney that had a lot more freedom and roamed a lot more. A real second striker positions himself between midfield and attack when the opponent has the ball, to be able to be open and in a decent position as soon as the ball is reclaimed. A 'real' second striker shouldn't have to track back to central midfield like Ferguson wanted him to do. Which is crucial for how you position yourself during the transitional period when your team reclaims possession. One of the reasons being, in my humble opinion, that Rooney had a lot more freedom in terms of positioning and creativity in the past, and was later restricted to deeper positions on the pitch during moments of possession for the opponent. You can look at it how you want of course, but I still think that Rooney had a lot more potential than Ferguson was able to get out of him. Luckily for Rooney David Moyes had other ideas.
It's understandable really that Ferguson felt he needed to move away from him as the main striker for United which he eventually did - firstly by signing van Persie and then picking him as the main man trying to cut the club's ties with Rooney in the process. He was sent away to the US in the middle of the 2010/11 season on a personal training program because of how unfit and out of form he was. He made one bad decision after another starting with the stupid red card in the WC qualifier and the subsequent horror show in South Africa, then his personal life issues and finally the transfer request at United all of which destroyed any momentum he had had on the pitch. What happened thereafter though was much more down to Wayne himself rather than Ferguson or anyone else. The only time when Rooney really truly looked world class and somewhere close to the same bracket as Messi and Ronaldo was in 2009/10 when he was indeed leading the line for United. I'm sorry but that's a bit of a one sided view on it and putting a lot of blame on Ferguson while ignoring the other side. There had to come a point where for my own career I had to be a bit selfish really.” That’s why I was disappointed because I got told to play in midfield and I didn’t want to but I’d always go in and try to help the team. Maybe when I’m a bit older, losing my legs a bit, I can go back there.”Īsked whether he made his desire to play up front known to management, Rooney said: “Everyone at the club knew that’s where I wanted to play. “I felt I deserved the right to play in my position and that wasn’t happening. “I actually felt when I played midfield I did OK but I didn’t want to play there,” Rooney said. Rooney himself has said many times that his fallout with Ferguson was caused by the very fact that he got frustrated with playing in midfield.
#MESSI FOOTBALL MANAGER 2005 FREE#
When he started out at United he was a second striker and could roam all over the pitch in a free role, but later on Ferguson started using him as an attacking central midfielder with a lot more discipline in terms of positioning and tracking back.