ROONEY: IT’ S TIME TO MAKE DERBY BELIEVE
JUsT for a fleeting moment, we caught a glimpse of that familiar cheeky smile. Amid a brutally honest postmortem of Derby’s dismal defeat by rotherham in his first match as permanent manager, Wayne rooney was asked to conjure up for us what a Wayne rooney team would look like.
‘A winning one, i hope!’ was the light-hearted reply, with all the gloom briefly dissipating as rooney laughed.
‘i want my team playing with energy, i want my team playing with a belief in terms of winning every game. That’s the mentality i need to change in the players.
‘Attacking but with composure as well. i don’t want the team to be a Leeds, for instance, i want to have a good balance. i don’t want the players scared to make mistakes. i want them to play with freedom.
‘i have signed for two and a half years to put my philosophy on the team.’
sketching out a philosophy is one thing, turning it into a reality is quite another.
After losing this Championship relegation six-pointer to a sickeningly late goal, rooney must be under no illusions that his first posting in management will be a steep learning curve.
Derby created the clearest chances but lacked the quality to convert them. They enjoyed far more of the ball than rotherham, yet could not build sustained pressure.
There is no doubt that this Derby team have improved since rooney took over as interim manager after phillip Cocu was sacked in november, but there remains a mental block when it really matters.
Jamie Lindsay’s scrambled winner, for instance, came after Derby’s defence, who have kept five clean sheets under rooney, reverted to old habits of hesitation and failed to clear following a set-piece.
The loss keeps Derby in the bottom three on goal difference and it is obvious signings are needed during this month’s window to ensure survival. For that to happen, the £60million takeover by sheik Khaled, a cousin of Manchester City owner sheik Mansour, and Derventio Holdings needs to be completed very soon.
Having already identified his transfer targets, rooney is trying not to think about what happens if the takeover does not get over the line before the window shuts.
‘it leaves us with what we have got, so the players have to step up,’ he said.
‘if that’s where we’re at, that’s where we’re at. We are prepared for every eventuality, including letting players go if we need to bring players in.’
rooney is only writing the first page of his managerial career, but rotherham counterpart paul Warne recommended he read Michael Calvin’s book Living on the Volcano for a warts-and-all insight.
‘As a football manager, it is bleak at times. You get impostor syndrome, you’re paranoid,’ Warne said. ‘But if you read the book, Arsene Wenger and sir Alex Ferguson felt that, it’s not just you.
‘it eases the pain and definitely helped me when i took over, because i found it brutal.’
rooney will no doubt live the experiences revealed in those pages soon enough.