Wayne Rooney’s form, or lack of form, has come into sharp focus again this week after another poor performance in the Manchester derby. If you look at his numbers, you’ll find a lot of zeros: 0 shots on goal, 0 chances created, 0 attacks.
Worryingly, he had – as one might think – the lowest passing accuracy of any player at 55% and recorded 28 turnovers, more than any other player.
This follows a string of similar performances this season, as I’ve mentioned before in these pages. Some said he was back after his goal against Everton, but that now seems to be just a blip; he seems consistently poor and occasionally effective.
It’s hard to fathom how a once-swashbuckling player could now crumble under pressure when he should still be in the latter stages of his prime. However, since his breakthrough as a teenager, he has made 678 appearances for club and country, an average of 48 games per season.
Football journalist Gabriele Marcotti noted last year that Rooney had already played a full game 68 times by the age of 20, more than twice as many as Messi and Ronaldo at the same age. In other words, Wayne has done a lot at a young age, probably too much.
Because of this, he scored 187 Premier League goals before his 30th birthday, while Shearer and Henry scored 176 and 174 respectively. Paul Scholes noted in his Paddy Power blog last year that Rooney may have reached his peak earlier than most players:
“Wayne’s peak may have been much earlier than we would traditionally expect from footballers. 28 or 29 is usually the ‘peak’. For Wayne it might have been when he scored 27 league goals in 2011/2012 at the age of 26. Wayne could be a player who retires at 31 or 32, given the amount of football he has played.”
Rooney then got really upset and said the comments were “weird” and essentially went on to say that Scholes was not his friend because they never had each other’s phone numbers. Charming.
Scholes’ comments seem less ‘weird’ by the day and might actually be spot on. What’s odd is that Scholes is now making excuses for Wayne on BT Sport every week, which often means blaming other players’ movements or lack of pace. Perhaps Paul has decided he wants Wayne’s phone number after all.
Van Gaal should now find a way to manage Rooney so that United can continue to exert his influence on the pitch in certain games, not all. Rooney certainly envisaged this style of game management for later in his career, but just because he shone so brightly as a young player, he now seems to be suffering from burnout.
Wayne Rooney
