KNOW YOUR PLACE WAYNE
Hard-line Sam refuses to guarantee Rooney starting berth or playing position
SAM ALLARDYCE has made it clear to Wayne Rooney that star status does not guarantee him the role he craves at Goodison.
The Everton manager had an informal chat with the former England captain yesterday following an explosive bust-up during the Merseyside derby at the weekend.
Rooney, furious about being substituted less than an hour into the game, snubbed Allardyce’s handshake and appeared to mouth obscenities when he took his place on the bench. Allardyce shrugged off the incident but has told Rooney that he is not droppable.
Rooney covets a deeper midfield role at Goodison but Allardyce has pointed to statistics that suggest the 32-year-old no longer has the legs for that job.
Speaking after the Liverpool game, Allardyce said: “The stats don’t lie. And when they say levels have to be lifted – no matter who it is, Wayne, Phil Jagielka, Tom Davies, whoever – you get left out of the team.”
The stats were not kind to Rooney at Goodison, and even more damning against Manchester City a week earlier.
Against Liverpool he made only 18 passes and two tackles in 57 minutes on the pitch. His replacement Idrissa Gueye made more passes and more tackles in 33 minutes on the pitch.
Against City it was worse, with Rooney completing just seven passes and making no tackles in the deep-lying midfield role. In 33 minutes as a replacement, Tom Davies made 13 passes, and youngster Beni Baningime nine passes in just 15 minutes on the pitch.
Morgan Schneiderlin, Rooney’s deep-lying midfield partner, made 42 passes against Liverpool and 20 against City.
With Gueye back and Allardyce complimentary about Schneiderlin’s performance in the derby, the Everton boss has told Rooney that he will probably be used further forward.
But there he must compete with the likes of Davies, Gylfi Sigurdsson, and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.