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PL Hangover: Has Jose Mourinho Sounded the Death Knell for Wayne Rooney?
- Updated: September 26, 2016
On the day Jose Mourinho held a tentative pillow over Wayne Rooney’s Manchester United career without smothering it completely, Gary Neville spoke with a disarming softness as if trying to convince an elderly relative perhaps now is the right time to go into a home.
Killing with kindness is an accusation often levelled at those paid to deliver hard verdicts. No player splits opinion between the public and pundits like Rooney. The more he is defended by ex pros, often Manchester United alumni, the angrier his critics get. It’s as if they are convinced he has them on some kind of retainer.
This “power” he supposedly holds in the game is often referred to without specifics being given, which would make inferred talk of the dark arts nothing more than hokum were it not for the fact he once went toe-to-toe with Sir Alex Ferguson and came out with a new contract. Other players came out from similar battles with less toes than they went in with.
Neville is no ordinary pundit, as Rooney well knows. Neither fawning nor vindictive—the twin curses of the player-turned-talking head—his transformation from national irritant to (minor) national treasure is testimony to the cogency of his arguments.
“He can still have a good career at this club—it’s not the end of Wayne Rooney today, it’s just a different part of his career, and if he accepts that, it can be equally as enjoyable,” was how Neville called it on Sky Sports (via Eurosport’s Tom Adams) after watching Manchester United beat Leicester City 4-1 at Old Trafford sans Rooney for all but 11 minutes.
Rooney may balk at Neville’s assessment, but he won’t dismiss it. He’ll carry it around with him like a doctor’s appointment, a persistent reminder there are few things as unnerving as the unknown.
While Robbie Savage picks his words about as carefully as most people choose which slice of bread to toast from a full loaf, Neville is the exact opposite. He will not have warned Rooney things are changing without due consideration, nor was he alone in sensing this could prove a watershed moment for both club and player.
Now Mourinho has dropped him, it won’t be half as difficult next time. The first cut is always the deepest. This was only the third time in 119 league games Rooney started on the bench. It won’t be the last time this season. There is no surer bet than that.
Gary Neville assesses Wayne Rooney dropping pic.twitter.com/7JKvMLWDFq
— Man Utd Videos ⚽️ (@ManUtdVines) September 24, 2016
In a performance as emphatic as the majority have been anaemic in the post-Ferguson years, Rooney was an onlooker. For all Mourinho’s attempts to underplay things both pre- and post-match, if indeed repeated use of “fast” and “young” to explain the motivation behind Rooney’s absence was designed to do such a thing, it felt like something seismic. Mourinho speaks slowly because, like Neville, he thinks about what he is saying.
“The question I knew would be Rooney but the question should be why [Jesse] Lingard and [Marcus] Rashford,” he said in his pre-match interview with Sky Sports (via the Telegraph). “Because they are quick, the way they stretch the game and when our main striker is Zlatan we need fast people to surround him.”
Let’s run that back. While it makes perfect sense not to pair a tortoise with a tortoise up front, where exactly does that leave Rooney? Ibrahimovic has played every minute of United’s six Premier League games so far.
What Mourinho should have said is: “When Given our main striker is Zlatan we need fast people to surround him.”
My feeling on Rooney is that Mourinho always knew he wasn’t up to it, but had to let the situation play out before he could drop him
— Dean Jones (@DeanJonesBR) September 24, 2016
I suspect he knew what he was saying well enough; along with the how it would be interpreted. Whichever way you choose to take Mourinho’s words, there’s an unmistakable admission Rooney and Ibrahimovic are not suited as a pair. It’s a view shared by a majority, hardly contentious even, but it’s a position the player has never previously found himself in. How he responds could be one of the more fascinating subplots of the season.
The interesting thing now is not to discuss how he is no longer the player he once was, but to explore the player he might yet become.
When fit, Anthony Martial and Henrikh Mkhitaryan will vie for the wide places with Rashford and Lingard, leaving Rooney to duke it out with Mata to play in behind Ibrahimovic. Rooney can at least draw a modicum of consolation from Mata’s mini-renaissance, even if it is at his expense.
The Spaniard has spent so much time in the cold under Mourinho over the course of his career, it’s said he’s had to miss reserve games through frostbite on occasion. He’s living proof fortunes can change under the Portuguese, even if his own future is far from certain.
When Neville proffered Rooney might even get to “go to Dubai in October” for a little sun, one sensed he was only half joking. A month away from his 31st birthday, it seems premature to talk of the winter of Rooney’s career, until you consider in 14 years of physical and mental toil he has clocked …
