The best managers and coaches have often not been very distinguished players. Successful players do nit necessarily make good managers. It's a different skill set. If it's the path they want to go down, they might be well advised to start coaching at Academy level and then take an assistant manager role.
Wayne Rooney arguably went into top level management too quickly. I also argued in an earlier post that he was not a particularly good fit with Plymouth Argyle. They need a coach who knows how to make the best of limited resources.
The sad scenes that accompanied Rooney’s final game at
Oxford felt a long way from the surge of optimism that greeted his arrival in
Devon on a three-year contract in May.
While some fans had misgivings over whether Rooney was
sufficiently experienced to steer a squad that had finished 21st in the
Championship the previous season into safer waters, the club seemed well set
up.
Rooney already had a relationship with Argyle director of
football Neil Dewsnip, who he knew from his time at Everton’s academy,
which was a big factor in him getting the job, and there was financial
stability under popular chairman Simon Hallett.
He moved into a waterside apartment in Plymouth’s Royal
William Yard and the majority of Argyle’s supporters appreciated Rooney’s
efforts to integrate himself in the city. He would generally return to his home
in Cheshire — where his wife Coleen, and children Kai, Klay, Kit and Cass still
lived — once, or sometimes twice, a week depending on the fixture schedule.
One Plymouth source told The Athletic it
was felt the players were not robust enough to perform week after week at the
intensity Rooney wanted. Plymouth have one of the lowest wage bills in the
Championship and spent less than £2million ($2.5m) on transfers in the summer,
mostly on young players.
Their average starting line-up is the sixth youngest in the
division this season, at 25 years and 84 days, and few of the squad
boasted Premier League experience. Yet others within the club felt
that Rooney should have been more proactive with the squad, especially around
tactical plans and performance analysis.
Staff at Argyle subsequently told The Athletic they
had felt Rooney had been drifting for the last two months, and questioned how
invested he was in what was becoming an increasingly tricky job.
Rooney’s trips to pubs and bars in the city, which had
initially endeared him to the fans, were now held against him, particularly as
he has spoken openly in the past about his relationship with alcohol. He once
told the Mail on Sunday he regularly went on secret two-day drinking
binges at home as he struggled with the pressures of fame.
There was an online backlash when photos — taken in the
summer but only widely circulated this week — emerged of him drinking at the
Skiving Scholar, a student pub near the city’s university. The club and
Rooney’s camp declined to comment when approached by The Athletic.
Most damaging, however, were Argyle’s results on the field
and the effect they were having on morale. A source close to one of the
Plymouth players told The Athletic the atmosphere at the club
was low and the players were eager for a change as they did not feel as though
Rooney was doing enough to change things and shore them up defensively away
from home.
Rooney was also hampered by injuries to key personnel,
including to his captain, Joe Edwards, Northern Ireland international
goalkeeper Conor Hazard and forwards Morgan Whittaker — an attacking talisman
who has attracted interest from other Championship clubs — Ibrahim Cissoko and
Muhamed Tijani.
Plymouth’s executives admired Rooney on a personal level and
considered him to have been an effective unifying figure after the divisive
tenure of his predecessor, Ian Foster. They wanted to give him the time to turn
the club’s fortunes around, but once it became clear that fans had turned,
their attitude hardened.
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