the problem with rooney is

he even tried to recreate his overhead fluke that some idiots voted goal of the season.

but he took u guys to euro 2012 final stage..

...he is a fat pig thatch haired c unt

All the hope of 2004 for a stellar international career all seems to have evaporated.  You would have bought after fighting tooth and nail to get him to the tournament, he might t least have had the good grace to be fit.  What a let down he's been.  Again.

rooney is obese
rooney is slow
his first touch was appalling
should do the decent thing and announce his retirement from international football

Lets be fair, they should all retire from International Football and bring some youngsters in. Gerrard, Terry. H

it is true, England fans are hard to please no wonder England won't win anything

He is a 50 pence piece in a wig.

Fat, overrated, wasteful. Would have done better with Mickey Rooney.

Hart, was our best player, because unlike at other tournaments, this goalkeeper didn't let the ball go under his arms, through his legs or any other big error.

rooney earns 100k per week and turns up for a major tournament lethargic and 2 stone overweight
says everything about him

yes hes a 1000 ton (a week) of sh1t

Does he even have a dietician? and if so is it Eric Pickles? ffs 100k a week and can't even get himself in top shape, someone should show him a pic of Ronaldo without his shirt.

Hodgson was in a position where he would have been slaughtered if he had dropped Rooney,so he had to play an overweight out of form shadow,he couldnt even sub him,but why persist with Young,he could only be praised for leaving him out.

someone should show him a pic of Ronaldo without his shirt.

-----------

dawsy must be able to spare one.

Try £200k per week. He complained £140k p.w wasn't enough and was going to leave for a club with 'greater ambitions.' Then the gullible mancs gave him a £200k p.w contract & obviously he signed because those assurances were met.

To be honest we played so much better with wallcott, welbeck and carroll up front, but Hodgeson would have been slated if he'd left rooney out for those 3.

ITs a shame, I dunno what was up with Rooney, youd expect him to be raring to go having missed first 2 games but he just didnt seem to give a toss, completely half hearted effort and his fitness was disgraceful, I think a 40 year old person who smokes could have run further.  It should monitored more the players fitness months before these international games, they should have good fitness.

I was watching the game with a group and amongst them was an Aussie girl who knew nothing about football. She asked how old he was and was very surprised when I said about 26. "Oh, she said. I thought he was at the end of his career."

Also Milner and Young were both awful, absolutely awful couldnt string two passes together those two.  Wish Young would have been subbed for OC early on, might have stood better chance then.

He was probably never right to train hard enough to get the fat off. So he should have stayed at home.

That's what happens when you have one man the press makes bigger than the team.

She asked how old he was and was very surprised when I said about 26. "Oh, she said. I thought he was at the end of his career."

----------

tbf, it doesn't have to be an either/or thing

Once again Rooney has been shown for what he is.  An average Premier League player.  By the time he's 30 he will be a bit player for club and country.  Has not moved forward in a footballing sense since he was 18.  Michael Owen wss the same.

Rooney will be delighted he can have his fave meal now its all over, sausages, beans and chips....

^ my favourite user name ever

Roger, when that pot belly was wobbling I think we all knew he hasn't cut out the chips, beans & sausage roll. On the contrary he has had double helpings.

owen was sensational but dogged by injury
rooneys problems stem from his desire to consume calories a plenty
even during the last few years when owen was passed his best he would never have turned up putting up 2 stone overweight

I never knew The Third Reich meant Germany!

"lorenzo st dubois. but my friends call me LSD"

hahaha. Gold.
"Hey man, is this where they auditioning Boomerang Baby?"

check out the story of how **** shawn died. it's like eric morecambe to the power of ten.

di ck

The problem is he's a man u player and they think man u's bigger than england. Not be long before Wellbeck goes the same way. Sick of watching man u players letting England down while the Chelsea and Liverpool players do us proud.

HE'S A BIG FAT POTATO

will look into that. Top film.

suffice to say, he was getting heckled for about ten minutes after he died.

The TRUTH is you overachieved by reaching quarters as your whole team were piss poor and unfit !

The problem is he's a man u player and they think man u's bigger than england. Not be long before Wellbeck goes the same way. Sick of watching man u players letting England down while the Chelsea and Liverpool players do us proud.

Very true. City players performed admirably too. The players as sad as there pathetic 'fans' on here.

Absolutely Charwell! I forgot City are big players too these days. Hart and Lescott have been excellant, I thought Milner's been good too despite the knockers. The future's brighter with the likes of them in the team at least.

Was only a week ago Hodgson was comparing Rooney with Pele!!!!

Had to laugh after the match tonight when Shearer said England performed up to their standard which is between the 5th to 7th best football team in the world. He must think they dont play football in south america.

They were totally outplayed football wise in every group game and tonight made an average italian side look like world beaters.

Was only a week ago Hodgson was comparing Rooney with Pele!!!!

-------

maybe he meant he needed drugs to rise to the occasion?

If Rooney was born in a Latin nation, he would be nowhere near as celebrated as he is. he is a fine player, but nowhere near the level the media hype him up to be. He has good vision, but lacks pace and could never beat a man with his pace or dribbling ability. His primary attributes are his vision, passing and shooting. He is always gooing to struggle with England due to the inability of the English midfielders to retain the ball.

What that last man said.

rare to have anyone ever agree with me paddletoe, cheers

Neil

I agree a fit Rooney probably our best player in England but against Ronaldo or Messi say he's miles adrift surely?

you can't drop him and you can't rely on him. and when he goes missing the other players don't seem to step up. it's like they're thinking, "winning it's wazza's job."

a braver manager would have subbed him tonight.

Yeah, agree, he is good though, but when your dropping off the centre forward and your central midfielder can't pick you out with a pass, it is very easy to become marginalised in a game. What England need to do is focus more on technique in the coaching department from a wrong age.

On the comparison with ronny and Messi, both of those guys can pick up the ball and beat 2 or 3 players each time, Rooney can't do this and that is the big difference.

you're*

young are rather,

age*

holy ****

Neil

Exactly he may be our best but our best is about 7.5/10 when he's fit which compared to about 10 better teams that's just not good enough.

It tells you all you need to know about the media hype surrounding england and how much their players are over rated when the talent of players like Rooney rises when they are out injured or suspended.

Take a player like Frank Lampard. A good player but nothing more than that. Take him out of the chelsea team and put him in a stoke jersey and he would not stand out as being anything above average.

Paddle

Yep frank's another one.  Been 7/10 at best at losing it a bit now. "the great world class frank lampard" ............ what utter nonsense!

Scot Parker at age 32 becomes the england captain and therefore a player you cant even drop no matter how bad he is playing. Now he is not the worst player in the world. But you cant make a player like that captain and by definition guarantee him his place in the team.

I thought the only england attack minded player to show any glimpse of talent was the young lad chamberlain and he was not seen after the firt match.

Chamberlain will be a player I agree, great technique, physique and imagination and Wenger won't coach it out of him.

I heard a stat tonight which was incredible. Outside of the 1966 world cup when they were at home England have NEVER EVER beaten a top footballing nation in any major tournament.

except spain in 1996 - when they were also at home.

Jun 25, 2012 -- 1:02AM, paddletoe wrote:

I heard a stat tonight which was incredible. Outside of the 1966 world cup when they were at home England have NEVER EVER beaten a top footballing nation in any major tournament.

Nearly right.  Never beaten a major nation in a knockout round outside of Wembley.  Beat Germany and Argentina since 2000 in group stages.  Still a shocking stat though.

On the other hand, we are very hard to beat, just imagine how different our international record would look if we could win penalty shoot outs.

The problem is not with Rooney it is with us.  We take a bright young talent and turn him into a massive hero before he actually is.  And we keep insisting he is our hero even while he is waddling around like a pregnant asthmatic penguin and expect him to perform like a supreme athlete such as Ronaldo.

I'm no expert on football but with my limited capacity I would say that England played better without Rooney.  Yet if the manager had not played him and we got past Italy and then lost out to Germany the media and public would have crucified him for it.

the problem with Rooney is that if he misses games due to injury or suspension he seems to lose his conditioning faster than other players.

Seen it regularly at United, misses a few games and comes back looking very sluggish.

He's unfit and his legs have gone.  He can't outpace many defenders any more and he can't put the ball past them and get past them to be first to the ball.  He can't dribble past defenders.  He can move sideways but he's quite static in attack and relies on getting the ball and getting a space from his marker and spotting a gap in the massed defence and having a shot.  That only works once in a blue moon.  Then he tries to lose defenders on a short run into goal and that's working a bit more often.  Compared to some he's quite good at all that but it's not unique any more.

Yes he can run up and down the pitch and he can hold the ball up until the rest of the (inept) attack arrives but most big forwards can do that using their size and that's also not that unique.  What else to say but there's not much choice for England and maybe he's the best available to them but that's a reflection on the paucity of talent available to England these days.  No matter how much the BBC etc recites Shakespeare in the build up to any competition or game it doesn't change the awful state of things.

He'll still do a job in the Premier" Division because of it's below par general level of footie.

I see Wimbledon starts today and for sure the BBC will be doing it's bit for Shakespeare again.  Expect similar success to the footie team.

(I've got nothing against Shakespeare in general )

I keep reading 'the media would have crucified hodgson if.....'

I'm sorry, that is what he and managers before him, are (very well) paid to do. Make the big decisions.

Never mind not playing yesterday, IMO Rooney should not have gone to the tournament full stop. He was unfit, has not played well for England in a tournament since 2004 - to the contrary, he's been a red-card in waiting.

At this tournamnet he was always going to be a malign influence over other forwards selected for the first two games, knowing no matter how well they played ooney was always going to come back in.

Every tournament, we have one player deemed indispensible to the England cause. Brian Robson, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and so the list goes on.

How many of those players have gone on to stamp their authority on a tournament, turning up after injury? How debilitationg to team morale is it to hear 'we stand no chance without our latest talisman' - who then ends up having feet of clay?

^good post

I agree with the thrust of rogerthebutler's post but this wasnt injury related as most other situations he ites were about.  I didn't have a problem taking Rooney, I just can't believe he was so unfit.  It wasn't match sharpness, he was too heavy.  Looked like he was coming back for a ore-season friendly.  Shocking really.

it speaks to a sense of entitlement, really.

you'd hope he'd think, "I can't play the first two games and it's my fault, but the manager's taking me anyway. And that means someone else is missing out, and someone's going to be dropped even if they play well. So I'm going to make bloody sure I'm in shape and run myself into the ground when I do play."

but no, he seemingly went on a mcdonalds bender instead. what total contempt that shows for his fellow players.

Spot on viva.  I'm really really disappointed in him.  I can accept players not playing well.  Sometimes they'll give it their all but it just doesn't go for them.  Rooney's case is a disgrace.

roger sums it up above

I suspect quite a few of the players have the same attitude as Rooney but it's just that it's become more obvious with Rooney.