Wayne Rooney: Derby manager insists he won’t quit even if takeover collapses
With the Championship side under a transfer embargo after players were not paid in full in December, Wayne Rooney was last week appointed as manager in his own right Wayne Rooney insists he will not quit as Derby manager even if the protracted takeover of the club collapses. The club agreed to sell the club in November to Abu Dhabi billionaire Khaled bin Zayed Al Nehayan’s Derventio Holdings. “Derby’s transfer embargo, due to players not being paid their full salaries in December, means that Rooney is unable to strengthen the squad during this month’s transfer window. Asked if he would leave Pride Park if the takeover did not go through, Rooney said: ‘No, not at all. Ideally I want the players. We need that. But if we can’t have that, I believe in the quality of the players we have.” It’s difficult with the transfer and salary situation for players and it’s difficult for me that I can’t get into the transfer market at the moment. Ideally, the sooner the players get paid, the sooner we can move on. Then we can look at the players we want to attract. Rooney finished his playing career and last week signed a 2.5-year contract as Derby’s permanent manager. He had been working as player-manager in the interim since the sacking of Phillip Cocu in November. Rooney says he believes a takeover is still on the cards, saying: ‘As far as I know they are still trying to do it. I understand all the papers have been signed and we are waiting to see when it happens.”
Neville tells Rooney: Govern like Simeone
Gerry Neville has called on Wayne Rooney to emulate Diego Simeone in his managerial style, mirroring the streetfighter footballer of his youth. I would tell Wayne several things. I would say treat it as your last job, not your first. I would say don’t be naive, which is hard when it’s your first work. When I walked into my first job in Valencia, I thought ‘everything is beautiful and perfect’. You can think: “We will play beautiful football and we will do this and that”, but he should behave as if he was fighting for his life right from the start. I would say, make sure that you are surrounded by the right people, who’m experienced, who can be sure that whatever traps and obstacles you encounter, there is a chance that they will stay. It’s important that he takes on the right job and I believe Derby has got the right pedigree to ensure that they give managers a chance. It feels like the right club, he’ll be able to learn where the pressure is, but not the pressure he’d be under straight away in a Premier League job. Obviously he’ll need a bit of luck as well. He was always going to be a coach, he always wanted to be a coach. I thought it was one of the best Monday Night Football shows when he came in. You could see he was a student of the game. I just hope his teams have someone with a personality like Wayne Rooney when he was a kid, not Wayne Rooney who got older and leveled off as he got older. I know you have to be articulate these days, but I hope he’s like Diego Simeone. That is what he was like as a player and as a child. A team that is aggressive and ferocious. That is one of my biggest regrets when I think about what I tried to do. You are trying to be something that you are not. My team was supposed to be mean, horrible and nasty. I thought that’s what a football team should be, but I was busy thinking about splitting the centre-backs. I would say that you are what you are. He’s a street fighter, so he has to be. That was in his game and that should be in his team. Hopefully his team’s is a mirror of who he was as a player at his best. Source – Skysports.com Photo by Unsplash Spele solitaire for free
