“It’s Gotten Worse.” Rooney Can’t Find Any Hope in Man Utd’s New Direction
By: Abudu Olalekan
It’s a powerful image, isn’t it? The sight of your own fans heading for the exits. Long before the final whistle. That’s what stuck with Wayne Rooney. And you just know it cut him deep.
He’s a club legend, a record goalscorer, the man they called Wazza. But right now, he’s just a fan. And he’s worried. Really worried.
Reportersroom gathered that following Manchester United’s latest humiliation, a limp 3-0 surrender to their noisy neighbours Manchester City, Rooney finally just said what everyone’s been thinking. He tried to be positive. He really did.
“I want to be as supportive and positive as I can be of the manager and the players,” he started, speaking on his BBC Sounds show. You could almost hear him trying to pick his words carefully. But the frustration was too much. “But it is tough to sit here and say we are seeing progression… We’re seeing none of that.”
Nothing. That’s what the club’s all-time top scorer sees. No plan. No progress. No hope.
It’s been almost a year since Ruben Amorim walked through the doors at Carrington. He was the man with the plan, the guy who was supposed to fix the mess left behind by Erik ten Hag. The club backed him, too. They opened the chequebook, spending something in the region of £250 million to bring in his players. The so-called ‘bomb squad’ was shipped out, and Amorim got to work building his team, his way. A rigid 3-4-3 system that brought him so much success at Sporting. That was the promise.
But nearly a year into his tenure, and the same old problems are creeping back in. Actually, according to Rooney, it’s worse than that.
“I think if the manager is honest with himself, it has got worse,” Rooney stated, blunt and to the point.
This isn’t just a bad run of form. This is building on a foundation of absolute disaster. Let’s not forget, United finished 15th last season. Fifteenth. They scraped together just 42 points, their lowest finish since 1990 and their fewest points since they were literally relegated in the 70s. It was a historic low.
And the new season, with a new-look squad, was meant to be the start of the climb back. Instead, they just seem to be digging a deeper hole.
Rooney kept coming back to that image from the Etihad. The empty seats in the away end. “You could hear the fans singing Amorim’s name, but I think that is so powerful that the United fans were leaving the game,” he reflected. “You know the game is over and I think they were very disappointed in what they were seeing.”
Disappointment is one word for it. Despair might be another.
It’s the lack of identity that seems to bug Rooney the most. The thing that every fan is scratching their head about. After all the talk and all the money spent. It feels like they’re just throwing things at a wall and hoping something sticks.
“What are the patterns?” Rooney asked, a question that hung heavy in the air. “What are we seeing that might improve the team moving forward?”
He’s not just a pundit offering a hot take. He’s a United man, through and through, asking the questions that the entire fanbase is screaming. Right now, no one seems to have an answer. And that’s the scariest part of all. Its a long road back from here.
