Rooney, manager, mid-term report

[Chris_Martin]

21 minutes ago, Pearson. said:

Extremely fortunate to make the play offs after robbing Leeds and totally exposed tactically in the final by a proven manager. His, fortunate for us, Premiership loans dropping to this level masked his inadequacies. Its no accident that Chelsea have now kicked on from mid table obscurity to challenge for a Champions league spot at the behest of a proven manager.

Why were we fortunate to make the play offs? We were top 6 for majority of the season, only really dropping out when we lost Mount through injury. Lampard decided to change tactics mid first half and we beat Leeds at their own game, what's wrong with that? 

Every manager has to start somewhere though. Don't forget that Chelsea have replaced him with a proven World Class manager, so they were always likely to improve after that. 

[TheresOnlyWanChope]

33 minutes ago, Pearson. said:

Extremely fortunate to make the play offs after robbing Leeds and totally exposed tactically in the final by a proven manager. His, fortunate for us, Premiership loans dropping to this level masked his inadequacies. Its no accident that Chelsea have now kicked on from mid table obscurity to challenge for a Champions league spot at the behest of a proven manager.

Our goalkeeper dropped the ball in the final! We finished in the playoffs on merit anyway. Chelsea finished 4th last year under Lampard and they were hardly mid table obscurity this season when he was sacked. We have had proven managers before but they haven't necessarily been successful. The manager needs backing, needs a good squad of players and needs to be able to motivate them. Lots of inexperienced managers will have solid tactical knowledge after long playing careers. 

[GboroRam]

2 hours ago, TomTom92 said:

However I do note that it’s a shame Sheffield United hung on to Wilder for so long.

Why would Wilder come to us? Didn't he leave Sheff Utd as they weren't investing adequately?

Who knows what our investment opportunity will be next season? I'm not confident it'll be much, if anything.

[Ted McMinn Football Genius]

1 minute ago, GboroRam said:

Why would Wilder come to us? Didn't he leave Sheff Utd as they weren't investing adequately?

Who knows what our investment opportunity will be next season? I'm not confident it'll be much, if anything.

I’ve sad it on another thread, CW is the perfect candidate for Celtic. Don’t see anyone else getting that job

[Millenniumram]

5 hours ago, Woodley Ram said:

Excellent post, agree with all of that. I would add that when he took over we became more direct and got the ball forward more quickly. I think over the last few games (apart from Barnsley) we have started to play in a more Cocu style, playing out from the back more.

Indeed, and it’s that inconsistency in style that is the problem. Must admit I prefer possession based football to hoofball, but either can be successful if done correctly over time. And that’s the main problem - over time. The most important thing is to choose a preferred style and build your game plan around it - we’re not doing that at the moment, we’re constantly changing styles to counter the opposition instead. It must be very confusing for the players, and it means we’ve got nothing to build and improve on every week.

[Millenniumram]

4 hours ago, VulcanRam said:

Great post. If my memory serves me right, to begin with we did play quicker more attacking football with an apparent beginning of a style of play? And we won games. It's only in the last four or five we seem to have slumped back into Cocu ball. Which has predictably seen results suffer. 

I'd love to know what's changed in Rooney's mindset.

Think he’s got it in his head that he’s some sort of managerial genius who can rotate like Guardiola and always get it right. I’m afraid that simply isn’t true...

[Day]

18 hours ago, Millenniumram said:

As I’ve said in other threads, I was never a fan of Rooney’s initial appointment - but even I don’t think calling for his head is justified right now.

Never had you down as the voice of reason, have you left your phone unattended? ?

[Van der MoodHoover]

4 hours ago, Chris_Martin said:

Why were we fortunate to make the play offs? We were top 6 for majority of the season, only really dropping out when we lost Mount through injury. Lampard decided to change tactics mid first half and we beat Leeds at their own game, what's wrong with that? 

Every manager has to start somewhere though. Don't forget that Chelsea have replaced him with a proven World Class manager, so they were always likely to improve after that. 

He didn't. Holmes got injured which brought Marriott on and then the Leeds back 4 gave us a goal. Once they got the jitters they imploded. I don't believe for one minute that game panned out according to some Frank master plan, great though it was.

[Rab a dab doo]

I think most fans are 'supportive' due to the situation we/he found ourselves (Derby) in both on and off the pitch this season. 

However outside the club the jury will be out until survival is guaranteed.

Overall at the moment he still has more plus marks than minus.  

If we survive then if he stays next season will be the acid test. 

[Chris_Martin]

28 minutes ago, Van der MoodHoover said:

He didn't. Holmes got injured which brought Marriott on and then the Leeds back 4 gave us a goal. Once they got the jitters they imploded. I don't believe for one minute that game panned out according to some Frank master plan, great though it was.

you could look at it that way, but you could also say Frank could have replaced Holmes with another midfielder. Instead he went with another forward. Could also say they gave us our first goal because with Marriott on he was applying more pressure than before. Could also say Frank was very brave & clever by drastically changing the formation/tactics before the game as well. Point is, people see whatever they want to see.

I don't like the way people are saying Lampard was no good, it's just because we had Mount etc.  Lets not forget Frank out smarted Premier league managers and teams that season as well. Beat Mourinho's Man Utd, Hasenhuttl's Southampton twice, ran Sarri's Chelsea very close too. And he did this in his first ever season of management. Yeah their were mistakes along the way but there were also some outstanding performances too. Think he is/was a lot better than some realise. 

[Millenniumram]

1 hour ago, David said:

Never had you down as the voice of reason, have you left your phone unattended? ?

I’m always the voice of reason, just some of you lot don’t understand the reasons ?

[May Contain Nuts]

7 hours ago, VulcanRam said:

It's only in the last four or five we seem to have slumped back into Cocu ball.

As always was and still is the case, 'Cocu ball' is a bit of a misconception. The idea that he didn't want us to attack teams, that his greatest desire was to see the ball go backwards & sideways and that the attacking players were having their positive instincts coached out of them was always a load of baalocks, really.

Granted 'Cocu ball' was never designed with the intent to get the ball forward as quickly as we have done under Rooney, but it's no coincidence that without Bielik in there & with CKR bang out of form that there are now so many similarities to some of the games under him.

There were all those calls back then that we should have adopted a style to suit our players, to make the most of what we had - Rooney was briefly able to do that and for a time some people seemed to regard him as a miracle worker turning around all that bad juju from the Cocu era.

Predictably enough it transpires that he only managed to do that because he had the right players to do it, and now they're injured or out of form we've slipped back into being a pretty awful team. I'm still not sure what style actually suits our squad and would be effective with the players we had available earlier in the season, we were onto a hiding whatever we did.

I was really hoping that Rooney would prove me wrong and show that the team were simply being mismanaged as people claimed, that the 'dour personality' of the manager really was the reason for what we saw on the pitch and that players we'd seen slowly becoming a shadow of the player we knew they could be regaining their confidence and form under a different, 'more motivational' manager who understood English football.

Instead we're seeing even less out of a number of them.

[Comrade 86]

On 14/03/2021 at 10:26, Tyler Durden said:

Thats only because he had Bielik playing for him according to more esteemed posters than myself. Allegedly. 

Ok, I'll bite. So why has our form suddenly fallen off the edge of a cliff from the moment he got injured? Obviously you have another explanation so let's hear it.

[Ellafella]

On 13/03/2021 at 20:55, Pearl Ram said:

He’s still in credit with me...just, he’s losing points (literally) with me by the week though.

I want to see us with an identity, and a positive one at that but you won’t get that adopting tactics to nullify the opposition every week.

The phrase flash in the pan crossed my mind earlier but I thought that might be harsh so I’ll just go with needs to up his, and the team’s game quick style, we are not nice to watch the majority of the time and you shouldn’t be saying that about your own team.

He's still in credit with me too. I think he's got his head screwed on and he knows a lot about management already. As he has explained quite clearly, philosophy and style will have to wait for now until we get enough points and we're clear of the sword of Damacles. I think we have seen a "regression to the mean" of late and a "return to type" namely we get within a whisker of being able to cross the ball and suddenly it's re-cycled back to the centre-half ...sideways then backwards. Wazza has quite clearly said he wants players to show more and run forward and take more risks so until he sees that's going to happen he can only keep giving them the words. The emergence of Louie Watson and how he manages that will be interesting; to me the guy looks a natural so was surprised to hear he'd been previously a winger and "released" {by West Ham?}. No manager gets it right just by his mere presence; he needs time to work out the best way forward; some people have very short memories and saying Cocu would still be in a job if he'd had Bielik, skates over an awful lot of plain poor stuff. Had Lee Gregory got an eye for goal, we'd have a few more points and be further up the table. 

The progress of a Team under a manager is rarely a straight line upwards...it's a 3 steps forward, 2 back, 2 forward, 3 back and so forth. So I'd give Wazza a B with "promising prospects". There are very thin margins in football - just ask Rowett - but things in football can also change very quickly (viz Sheff Utd) so keep the faith. Wazza eats, sleeps and breathes football and has a very determined focus to be successful. Set-backs will happen but the underlying trajectory will be upwards. 

 

[Tyler Durden]

38 minutes ago, 86 Hair Islands said:

Ok, I'll bite. So why has our form suddenly fallen off the edge of a cliff from the moment he got injured? Obviously you have another explanation so let's hear it.

I find it quite a facile, overly simplistic equation.

 

[Comrade 86]

8 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

I find it quite a facile, overly simplistic equation.

 

But you can't say why. How predictable.

[May Contain Nuts]

It is too simple to say it's purely Bielik because it ignores the impact of CKR, or rather a proper focal point up top, on how we can play.

We struggled under McClaren when Martin was marked out of the game or referees didn't buy the wardrobing, and that was with one of our best squads of a generation.

We managed ok for a long spell last season even having to rotate Martin & Waghorn at CF, and with Rooney & Bird as the DM pairing. Once Waghorn was out, Martin was overplayed and Rooney's legs completely went it fell apart.  We're seeing similar now, but without Rooney's occasional free kicks or Lawrence's long rangers to drag us out of a hole.

[Pearl Ram]

16 minutes ago, Ellafella said:

He's still in credit with me too. I think he's got his head screwed on and he knows a lot about management already. As he has explained quite clearly, philosophy and style will have to wait for now until we get enough points and we're clear of the sword of Damacles. I think we have seen a "regression to the mean" of late and a "return to type" namely we get within a whisker of being able to cross the ball and suddenly it's re-cycled back to the centre-half ...sideways then backwards. Wazza has quite clearly said he wants players to show more and run forward and take more risks so until he sees that's going to happen he can only keep giving them the words. The emergence of Louie Watson and how he manages that will be interesting; to me the guy looks a natural so was surprised to hear he'd been previously a winger and "released" {by West Ham?}. No manager gets it right just by his mere presence; he needs time to work out the best way forward; some people have very short memories and saying Cocu would still be in a job if he'd had Bielik, skates over an awful lot of plain poor stuff. Had Lee Gregory got an eye for goal, we'd have a few more points and be further up the table. 

The progress of a Team under a manager is rarely a straight line upwards...it's a 3 steps forward, 2 back, 2 forward, 3 back and so forth. So I'd give Wazza a B with "promising prospects". There are very thin margins in football - just ask Rowett - but things in football can also change very quickly (viz Sheff Utd) so keep the faith. Wazza eats, sleeps and breathes football and has a very determined focus to be successful. Set-backs will happen but the underlying trajectory will be upwards. 

 

Loving your optimism though not exactly sharing it at this moment in time. I’m up for giving him a fair crack of the whip but I feel he’s losing his way recently. For me his Cardiff selection and how he set us up that night is indefensible. Did the Sheffield United manager Chuck the towel in when his side visited Old Trafford recently ? No, and they came away with a win.

I love the fact Wayne Rooney is our manager, as I did Lampard but I don’t want any more nonsense and negative tactics.

Wishing him all the best, starting tonight. COYR.

[Comrade 86]

2 minutes ago, Coconut said:

It is too simple to say it's purely Bielik because it ignores the impact of CKR, or rather a proper focal point up top, on how we can play.

We struggled under McClaren when Martin was marked out of the game or referees didn't buy the wardrobing, and that was with one of our best squads if a generation.

We managed ok for a long spell last season even having to rotate Martin & Waghorn at CF, and with Rooney & Bird as the DM pairing. Once Waghorn was out, Martin was overplayed and Rooney's legs completely went.  We're seeing similar now, but without Rooney's occasional free kicks or Lawrence's long rangers to drag us out of a hole.

It's not the only reason but nobody has said that it is. What folk are saying is that without Bielik to paper over the cracks, we're just as ordinary as we were under Cocu. The coaches have been completely unable to get us playing go-forward football since he was injured. That's not a coincidence.

[Tyler Durden]

4 hours ago, 86 Hair Islands said:

But you can't say why. How predictable.

The only thing that's predictable was Wolfie giving a positive reply to your perceived put down to me.

I would have quoted his username but don't want to further encourage his cyber stalking tendencies.