Wayne Rooney. Really?
Adam Price reacts to the news of Wayne Rooney's appointment as the new Head Coach of Plymouth Argyle.
By Adam Price
I sit here flabbergasted. I’ve no idea how I’m going to get through the entirety of this piece, so let’s hold hands and try to do this together.
Plymouth Argyle have been without a manager since Ian Foster was finally dismissed in April. A protracted search followed, with a number of names linked with the Home Park hot seat. Some rumours were far more credible than others. Today, Argyle announced who they have plumped for and it’s… Wayne Rooney.
The decision leaves me completely baffled. I’d actually credit Rooney with being one of the key men in securing Argyle’s survival last season - his total ineptitude in charge of Birmingham City was one of the main reasons they finished one place, and one point, behind the Greens. Now he finds himself, bizarrely, in another Championship managerial role.
I’m a Plymouth Argyle fan. I’d love this to be a successful move. Right now though, I can only see things ending in tears, with us supporters and the rest of the world left to wonder what on earth the club were thinking.
The worst possible decision?
Rooney arrives at Home Park on the back of being arguably the worst manager in the Championship last season. He was certainly in the bottom three.
It’s ground that has been extensively covered before, but allow me to reiterate. Birmingham were sixth when they took the shambolic decision to replace the popular John Eustace with Rooney in October. Admittedly, their position was somewhat false. I don’t believe Eustace would actually have had the team challenging for the play-offs had he lasted the season, but it’s unlikely he’d have crashed the ship in the way we saw with Rooney.
Some stats are simple, and Rooney’s say it all. In short, Birmingham were so much better when he wasn’t around. Had it not been for his spell at St Andrews, they wouldn’t have even been in the relegation conversation. Under Rooney, the Blues were worse in front of goal, a huge mess at the back, and the points return was an obvious reflection.
It’s not as if Rooney can claim to be unlucky either, with the xG data for his reign painting a particularly grim picture.
Under the umpteen other managers Birmingham had at the helm last season, they had an average xG difference of +0.04 in their 31 games. In the 15 under Rooney, they posted an abominable average of -0.84. To put that into perspective, that’s only slightly better than Rotherham United’s average for the entire season (-1.04). It’s no surprise, therefore, that Rooney’s expected points figures shape up terribly. Birmingham averaged 1.44 expected points per game without Rooney last season. With him? 0.8.
All of this lends weight to the argument that he was the worst manager in the entire league. If we rule out managers at Rotherham, who played like a League One club from the first game of the season, there are probably three candidates: Rooney, Foster, and Mick Beale at Sunderland.
Ian Foster was, spoiler alert, bad. Consider this though: during his ill-fated spell at Argyle, he won 23.5% of his games in the league. Dismal, indeed. Meanwhile Rooney somehow managed to post an even worse figure, winning 13.3% of his games at Birmingham. Not only was his record worse than Foster’s, it was almost twice as bad. And bear in mind that Birmingham’s squad cost much more to assemble than the one Foster had at his disposal. Beale, for his part, won 33% of his games during his Sunderland spell.
Win rate can be a reductive statistic. However, when it’s paired with the other stats we’ve explored, a picture emerges of a complete basket case of a club and manager. And that’s before you even consider other elements of Rooney’s reign. He had no plan B, his man-management was non-existent, and it hardly helped to have his son slagging off the players online.
There are no redeeming features to Rooney’s Birmingham spell. After relegation, some Brum fans declared the move to appoint Rooney as the worst managerial decision in football history. Inexplicably, Argyle have now taken the same decision.
A nod to all we feared
Hiring Rooney would be seen as a crazy move at the best of times. Here, it is compounded by the fact that it’s happened a matter of months after a similar head coach recruitment process saw Ian Foster employed. Right now, do you feel as though the board has learned anything from the Foster debacle?
Upon Foster’s unveiling, there were some foreshadowing rumblings about the logic behind handing him the reigns. Had Argyle overlooked better candidates to employ one of Neil Dewsnip’s mates? Was Foster trusted because he was a good manager, or because he was good to manage? For a while at least, some were willing to give the process the benefit of the doubt. Now, it’s a case of once bitten, twice shy.
Argyle have had two recruitment processes for a key managerial position in the first half of 2024 alone. In both cases, it’s blatantly obvious that the best candidate has not been offered the job.
As I mentioned, the merits for some of the names within the rumour mill are debatable, but we know for a fact that Paul Heckingbottom was interviewed. Given their respective records, who in their right mind would consider Rooney to be a better qualified candidate? Why was this not considered when making the hiring decision? I think we know why.
Right now, things at Argyle feel very similar to the latter days of Foster’s reign, with the board refusing to accept criticism and acting with a “we’re cleverer than you” level of arrogance. Take owner Simon Hallett’s antics on Thursday as an example. He responded directly to an Argyle fan criticising the board on Twitter, stating that he “simply doesn’t understand” certain views.
We appreciate all views, but some I simply don’t understand. https://t.co/4VRfEYkW1p
— Simon Hallett 💚 (@SimonHallett) May 23, 2024
He may have a point – the original tweet was strongly (and probably unfairly) worded. But why engage at all? The account had barely 200 followers, and clearly didn’t reflect the views of the majority of the fanbase. Getting involved at all was unwise, and suggests he’s remarkably thin-skinned; it was, after all, Hallett’s first tweet for a week. If this is what he’s willing to say online, how must other, more legitimate criticisms be treated in the privacy of the boardroom?
The stupidity of engaging was compounded by the fact that the news surrounding Rooney broke on the same day. Having spend the day calling out a supporter for criticism, Argyle released news to the press that went down like a cup of cold sick. They must have known how that would have been received, right? A board with such a track record of success wouldn’t expect us to be thankful for this news, right? Right?!
Hallett is skating on thin ice. For most of us, this was the week we learnt that season ticket prices were set to increase by £80 from two years ago. Meanwhile, Argyle’s owner and chairman was falling out with supporters on social media, before delivering possibly the worst managerial news imaginable. The optics could hardly be worse.
I’m not someone who wants to drive Hallett away from the club, and I think there is a huge “be careful what you wish for” element with potential investment and takeovers. That being said, something is clearly up. Is he feeling fatigued? Is he beginning to realise he’s taken the club as far as he can? Only Hallett knows for sure, but the relationship he shared with supporters for much of his tenure is clearly fractured, and needs some rebuilding.
As for Dewsnip, well, his reputation is seriously on the line. Much like Hallett, he has credit in the bank. After all, he put his own head on the chopping block last season by refusing to hire Neil Warnock and trusting himself to guide Argyle to survival. He succeeded, but this is an even riskier move. If an appointment that looks brainless from the outside doesn’t turn out to be a masterstroke, his reputation will be in tatters.
We have come out of another recruitment process, and again appointed someone unqualified for the job simply because of who he knows. This had better work. I can already imagine the headlines if Rooney’s tenure is the failure we expect. Everything we feared about the Foster appointment has been proved correct. Worse still, it’s been repeated. No club in the Championship would swap their manager for Wayne Rooney. Nobody else would appoint a manager with Rooney’s record but for their own personal vanity.
There was no reason for it to be this way. Frankly, the whole process stinks.
Any reasons for optimism?
I’ll try.
In a few ways at least, Rooney has my respect. Given the lack of success, many may have simply given up on a career in management. But Rooney is clearly desperate to make it as a coach, and willing to go to clubs other former playing superstars may consider “unfashionable” to forge ahead with his career.
That is perhaps the one main positive in this situation: Rooney simply must make this work. If he doesn’t, he’ll never get a job at this level again. Frankly, he wouldn’t have got a job at this level after the Birmingham debacle had Dewsnip not been in a position of power at another club, but here we are. If his playing days are anything to go by, Rooney will tackle this head-on. He may lack a lot of things, but he doesn’t lack commitment. He’ll throw everything at this, desperate to make a success of things, and that’ll hardly be a hindrance.
Another positive is the fact Rooney tends to bring with him a coaching team. That already places him one step ahead of Foster, who barely had any backroom staff for the majority of his reign. Granted, one of the coaches Rooney is likely to bring along once took an air rifle to Chelsea training and shot a student, but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.
When scanning for more genuine positives, we could perhaps look at elements he’ll have available here that he didn’t at Birmingham. One of those is a full pre-season and transfer window.
Having joined Birmingham in October, and having previously managed a Derby County side in financial strife, Rooney has never really had the chance to build his own squad. He’s also not had a long time on the training pitch to get his ideas across. He’ll be afforded those luxuries here. Given his contact book, I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest that could be a source of genuine excitement.
I can also see merits to the argument that Argyle’s squad is better suited to Rooney’s preferred style of play than Birmingham’s ever was. Look at the defence as an example. As we previously covered, Birmingham’s defence was a mess under Rooney, conceding an average of two goals per game. It should be mentioned, however, that a fair proportion of the goals conceded were as a result of individual errors. We saw this when we previewed Argyle’s game with Rooney’s Birmingham, and a defensive error led directly to Argyle’s opener that day.
This is an area where I do have at least some sympathy for Rooney. In the same way a manager can’t be blamed for a striker missing an open goal, they shouldn’t take the rap for a defender giving the ball away on the edge of their own penalty area. Of course, Rooney wasn’t totally blameless for Birmingham’s defensive woes. Far from it. But the players at his disposal didn’t cover themselves in glory.
Let’s not forget that Birmingham looked strong that afternoon. It’ll be Rooney’s goal at Argyle to have his side playing the same way every week, whilst cutting out the individual mistakes at the back. If he can there is a chance that maybe, just maybe, he can have some joy.
In next week’s newsletter: read how pigs may soon fly.
What next?
Of course, I’d genuinely like this move to work out for the best. I’d also like to win the lottery, but one step at a time. I’ve even gone as far as to title this piece in honour of Gary Lineker’s infamous tweet when Claudio Ranieri was announced as Leicester City’s manager in 2015. I’d suggest that move turned out to be rather prosperous.
Claudio Ranieri? Really?
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) July 13, 2015
Alas, in any case, I cannot see any circumstances where Plymouth Argyle are the beneficiaries of this situation.
Make no mistake: the most likely outcome here is that Rooney fails. A manager with his track record is more likely to fall flat on his face than he is to be a surprising success. There may be a few potential positives we can draw from his appointment, but they are outweighed by a vast array of negatives.
But even if we consider the possibility of Rooney hitting the ground running, of succeeding where all of the evidence suggests he will fail, is this really likely to benefit Argyle? Sure, it may get a few more eyes on the club in the short term, but that doesn’t feel like a reason to take such a huge risk.
We also need to consider the man at the centre. Rooney has made no secret of his managerial ambitions. Given his stature in the game, he’d probably already be managing at Premier League level had he shown any indication of talent.
He’ll surely see Argyle as a stepping stone, as an opportunity to get himself back on the managerial ladder. And it’s not as if we haven’t seen him turn his back on a club for greener pastures before. He left Derby shortly after their relegation was confirmed, despite the club trying “tremendously hard to change his mind,” and during his playing days his move from Everton to Manchester United was of course extensively documented.
Whether Rooney succeeds or not, Argyle will surely find themselves looking for another head coach in the near future. If you were a coach of any repute whatsoever, would you put your name forward? Given what’s happened in the last two recruitment campaigns? Given how Argyle have treated Heckingbottom and all of the other applicants each time?
Right now, it’s Argyle’s rivals who are laughing. They may well continue to do so throughout the season. If Rooney somehow proves them all wrong and succeeds, he’ll be laughing all the way to the bank as he takes on a job of higher stature.
There will be winners from this decision. Does anyone really suspect one of them will be Plymouth Argyle?
So far this diatribe has not aged well. It’s remarkable to me that some of our own fans fail to see what seems apparent to those from the outside - we are a well run club with processes in place and have achieved much success since control passed to SH. But I understand the need for ‘content’. Here am I, reading it and commenting. So on that score at least, job done.