Wayne Rooney is a celebrity; he doesn’t need this Plymouth hell

It hasn’t been a good week to be a Plymouth fan. Having racked up a 6-1 and 4-0 loss, they’re sitting in 21st with only four wins all season, one win in nine, no away victories and a -20 goal difference, the worst in the league. It seems quite likely that manager Wayne Rooney will be sacked sooner rather than later. It’s his fourth managerial job and he has yet to break the 30% win ratio mark, having managed 173 games and won just 45.

He’s undoubtedly worked in sometimes difficult circumstances, but it would be hard to reach a conclusion other than this: Wayne Rooney isn’t that good at management. At least not yet. But that’s not the point. The greater truth is that he’s trying and hopefully learning. He certainly doesn’t have to. He doesn’t need the money, but obviously just wants to be involved in football. No airs and graces, no entitlement, just a passion for the game for a man who often seems rather shy and a little bashful, rather than an ego-fuelled monster who demands it all on a plate and trades off a playing career.

Admittedly, his employment by Plymouth was driven by their director of football, Neil Dewsnip, who coached Rooney as a youngster at Everton, but it could hardly be described as a glamour job.

Not for him the entitled “offers are on the table..I want a club which matches my ambition” bullsh*t which is even now touted by English ex-players in one form or another. You don’t have to look far in English football to find a xenophobic attitude, even though British or Irish managers can’t claim to suffer undue discrimination with only 27 overseas managers currently working for the 92.

The anti-foreign, pro-British manager poison leaks from every pore of some. Paul Merson was trying but failing to articulate some such notion in coherent sentences on Soccer Saturday, but just ended up starting and stopping and starting again, saying random words in the hope of being in the same postcode of articulacy. The gist seemed to be translatable as ‘it’s not fair that great names like Lampard and Rooney have to manage so low down because of foreigners taking the good jobs’. I could be wrong, it was hard to decipher and he was eating crisps.

This latest big defeat for Wayne came on the same weekend as Frank Lampard’s appointment at Coventry, a great gig that some seem to think is beneath him, but which seems entirely rational to the rest of us. If not a little generous on Coventry’s part.

We know the owners of clubs are overly impressed by a big name, and I’d be surprised if Everton have or will offer Rooney the chance to drink from the poisoned chalice, even though any knowledge of football would tell you that for every Johan Cruyff, there’s a Roy Keane. It is massively to Wayne’s credit that he hasn’t leaned into this tendency, as one of England’s best former players, and he absolutely could have done with the full support of mind-in-neutral ex-pros who would probably call him ‘a proper football man’ and be deaf to our mocking laughter.

Learning your trade in the lower leagues, failing a few times, and fire-fighting difficult situations, will only make him better. He’s got plenty of years ahead of him yet. And I guarantee that as soon as one lower-league club he manages is successful, a Premier League job will become available. In an era of worship of privilege and fame, it’s pleasing to see someone with both not taking advantage of the fact.

Fans usually hate unearned privilege, which has definitely been enjoyed by Lampard, and we’ve seen how detrimental it can be in the long run. Obviously it goes without saying that great footballers do not inevitably make great managers; it’s been proven time and again. It’s refreshing to see Rooney abandon this unfair and uninformed route, and he clearly isn’t a believer in trying to shortcut a managerially successful career.

It remains to be seen if he’s making the best of a bad job, or is handling a good squad poorly, but he should be congratulated on taking the job at all. I suppose you could argue while Rooney is doing jobs that he doesn’t need to do, he’s taking bread from a mouth that does. But that would seem unduly harsh as he’s got as much right as anyone to take a job in football, and at least he’s not taking jobs he’s manifestly too inexperienced and unsuited for. But he must eke out some sort of success soon or he’ll slip further down the leagues.

But as we’re in an age of rewarding ever more worthless, meaningless celebrity, Wayne Rooney is effectively standing against it in his managerial career and we should celebrate that. I look forward to his success, because he will have earned it by taking the roads traditionally not walked by wealthy former stars..