Wanye Rooney: The Most Under-Appreciated Player in England

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39880891

Robbie Savage believes that Rooney is the most under-appreciated player in England.

In a way, I can understand where he's coming from. If you had been told, at the start of Rooney's career that he would be England and Manchester United's captain and top goalscorers of all time you'd assume he was going to be revered and one of the most popular figures in the game. You'd be surprised that there was any doubt for his standing in the game, yet here we are. 

I think there's a couple of reasons why this is the case:

• He peaked too soon, Rooney peaked earlier than most players. He was probably best between 2008-2010 when he was just 23-25, at that stage he'd also been around for 6 years already. That means we've had plenty of time of Rooney below his best and declining which effects how people view the rest of his career. Where other players will grow as players, peak around 27-30 and then decline with age, Rooney burst onto the scene, peaked and then has just been declining since. He's not broken the England and Manchester United goalscoring records during a great period of his career, he's broken them almost by longevity more than great goalscoring feats. 
  
• He turned Manchester United fans against him through his flirtations with leaving. United fans should be Rooney's biggest fans, but because of the way he handled contract re-negotiations that has soured his place with United fans. Liverpool fans did forgive Gerrard, but he was a local boy from the academy playing for an underachieving club, it's clearly harder for Manchester United fans to forgive a Scouser who seemingly was tempting to leave the biggest club in England at the time for their city rivals. Although in retrospect, Rooney was right that the club needed to invest in better players and they have fallen behind because they didn't do it until it was too late. 
  
• His off the field antics, he's a serial cheater, including cheating on his wife when she was pregnant. Rooney has tried to make his image that of a family man, but that is always going to affect his standing in the game. I don't think it's a huge difference maker because there's plenty of cheaters in football who are still more respected than Rooney.
  
• Failure to deliver in international tournaments. Similar to peaking too early, Rooney's only top performance at an international tournament came in Euro 2004 and since then he has repeatedly failed to deliver. Unlike David Beckham who went through a similar thing, he never really made up for getting sent off against Portugal and then in later years he has been ineffective at delivering for England, even during his peak years. Unlike previous record holder, Bobby Charlton who definitely did deliver for England, in a way it seems a little cheap that Rooney is the new record holder with only a single goal at a World Cup and never really delivering for England. Even during his peak, Gerrard, Lampard, Ashley Cole and John Terry at the very least had better tournaments than Rooney. 
  

What do other people think? Is Rooney under-appreciated, if so why? I think he'll be viewed much differently once his career is over as his peak and later decline can be put in better context. It's much harder to judge whilst he's still playing. It is crazy to think he's still only 31 though.

I think one of the biggest issues that turned many away from Rooney was how the media reported his apparent attempts to blackmail Man Utd, threatening to move away, and then getting a new deal worth £300,000 a week - which I think at the time was the highest anyone had been paid. Following that, his performance didn't noticeably improve and people began to question whether he was worth £300,000 a week and whether he had lost motivation.

I don't think so.

For me Rooney has rarely flirted with being amongst the world's best and it showed best when he was robin to Ronaldos batman. He's been a good player for a long time who's occasionally had great form.

GSC wrote:I don't think so.

For me Rooney has rarely flirted with being amongst the world's best and it showed best when he was robin to Ronaldos batman. He's been a good player for a long time who's occasionally had great form.

I don't think that's entirely true, Ronaldo, Vidic and VDS got all the headlines but what made us so good at the time was the cohesion through the whole squad, we could chop and change at will without it affecting us overly. Rooney was pivotal to everything we did and Ronaldo didn't perform as well any time he didn't play, they were as important as each other.

He's been tarred with a brush of being despised purely for being English and not carrying us to Glory.

He was incredible at times in his peak years, it says a lot that a player as good as Tevez wasn't really a shining light in that side because Rooney and Ronaldo were so good

A lot of it has to do with timing I think.  

Rooney was among the elite for a good few years and was a very exciting footballer to watch, possibly he peaked too early or ran out of steam early due to lots of playing time while young?  

But, I think with regards the perspective of Rooney, the problem stems from his rapid decline while still earning mega money. Add to that, also breaking England's and United's goal scoring records whilst well into said decline.  All made it feel a bit flat and almost unjust.

Rooney's biggest problem is his lack of success at international level major tournaments. He was pretty dire in World Cups and Euros. Also comparisons between him and his nearest peers do him no favours. He's not anything like the talents of Ronaldo, Messi or even Bale. Ronaldo can carry his national team and sometimes Real Madrid. Bale carried the Welsh team to the Euros. Messi carried Argentina in the World Cup. Rooney isn't good enough to be the wonder kid of the team the way these players are.

Messi has never carried Argentina, I don't think any of them are great at international level to be honest, incidentally Rooney at Euro 2004 was probably the best performer.

Hammersmith harrier wrote:Messi has never carried Argentina, I don't think any of them are great at international level to be honest, incidentally Rooney at Euro 2004 was probably the best performer.

He did in the last World Cup.