Wayne Rooney’s Birmingham hear the boos in lacklustre defeat by Hull
Play forward, on the front foot, take risks, be brave; the supposed recipe for the no-fear style of play trumpeted by Birmingham City’s top brass as reasons to be cheerful about a new, ambitious era led by Wayne Rooney and fronted by Tom Brady. All of those things were on show in Rooney’s first home game in charge, the only problem being those buzzwords were mastered not by Birmingham but opponents Hull City. It was impossible not to tune into the frequency of discontent as the boos rang around St Andrew’s at the final whistle.
It felt somewhat alarming that after a second successive defeat since taking charge, Rooney criticised his players’ attitude and conceded some of them have admitted to being uncomfortable with his demands. In fairness, Rooney has never been one to dress up the reality. “It is clear the players are not comfortable,” he said afterwards. “I’ve said to the players: ‘Be honest with me, if you don’t feel you can do it, tell me, we can adjust, we can adapt.’ It’s something for me to look at it in terms of: ‘Am I asking too much, too soon?’ It is my job to fix that.”
After the pre-match pyrotechnics and fireworks, Rooney’s entrance fell flat. His first visit to this ground, in 2002, ended with him being sent off for Everton, aged 17, for a lunge on Steve Vickers 15 minutes after entering as a substitute and this proved another miserable evening, with away supporters basking in Birmingham’s inevitable defeat approaching full time. “You’re getting sacked in the morning,” they rejoiced. Liam Delap and Jaden Philogene, two of the most exciting players in the Championship, got the goals. Philogene’s was a peach from outside the box that in effect killed the game with 74 minutes gone, much to Rooney’s annoyance. “I was concerned with the lack of effort in the last 10 minutes,” he said.
Last weekend at Middlesbrough it was Michael Carrick, a former teammate, who he was up against and on the touchline here there was another familiar face in Liam Rosenior, who was his assistant at Derby County. The pair built a friendship in the face of adversity but after contending with endless off-field problems together here it was a case of contesting throw-ins metres apart. “I would be excited if I was a Birmingham fan and Wayne Rooney walked in,” Rosenior said. “It is just going to take time. I know this club is trying to build something and a way of playing. I know Wayne and if you give him time I’m sure he will get things right.”
Rooney swivelled in his technical area as Delap feasted on a blind pass by the Birmingham left-back Emmanuel Longelo to earn Hull a 12th-minute
lead and the locals grew increasingly restless as Hull pushed for a second goal. Philogene, the impressive England Under-21 winger signed from Aston Villa in the summer, went close in the first half before deservedly adding
Hull’s second goal after the interval, bouncing in off the left flank before curling a shot into the far corner.
Part of Birmingham’s method behind the widely perceived madness of sacking John Eustace with the club sixth in the table in favour of hiring Rooney, their chief executive, Garry
Cook, said, was the promise of fearless football. Cook acknowledged his comments were open to interpretation.
“Playing safe can lead you to a place of mediocrity,” he reiterated at Rooney’s unveiling.
There was a painful irony staring back at Rooney from all angles in the final minutes. The word Undefeated, the name of the clothing company announced as Birmingham’s principal sponsor in the summer, flashed on loop on the LED advertising hoardings surrounding the pitch. That partnership was the US owners’ first notable piece of business, a month before the seventime Super Bowl champion Brady was named a minority shareholder. How the Birmingham hierarchy, including chairman Tom Wagner, who was present here, could do with their latest marquee signing making an impact sooner rather than later.