Didn't vote. Need an option that says "he won't make us worse, but that doesn't mean we should do it" The question isn't whether he makes us worse. The question is whether another strategy could get us more value per dollar. The only way he makes us worse is if we have to trade away some assets to make room. But all else being equal, Rooney would be an addition. If Lampard could come to MLS at 38 and score like 8 goals, I'm sure Rooney will get his share too. If Ben uses him correctly, and if he stays reasonably healthy, I see no problem in Rooney getting upwards of 10-12 goals next season.
Also, no vote in this poll from me; the choices pretty much suck, given the question that's being asked.
Isn't this the part of the thread where we state George Weah rumors? I'd think being President of Liberia wouldn't give him time to play but what do I know?
Of course. Not saying it would be a slam dunk, but within the realm of possibility. Rooney having 4 goals at this stage of the season would not be surprising to me at all. Keep in mind that Mattocks's best season to this point was 7 goals. He needs a lot more proving just for me to consider him a viable 10 goal scorer, let alone a 15 goal scorer.
I voted for all, but that's partly because, as a DC resident, we don't get a lot of chances for meaningful votes. I honestly can't see how he could possibly be worth the dinero -- on the field. If OTOH you thought that, maybe, say, the owners didn't care about the quality of the product, and if, maybe, you thought that they didn't really know very much about soccer, and if, well, maybe, you know, they said "who's a person near/post retirement who might sell a bunch of jerseys who isn't Beckham" and well, if they wanted to take the same, nuanced, respectful Trumpian approach to player acquisition and budget management that they have with, say, the supporters groups, well, then maybe it might make sense? Does seem pretty 1999 to me. Its a lot to spend given his history. Maybe we can get Gigi Buffon to sit in with my pick up team too.
There is no money, Wayne Rooney comes free. Free in the sense that the league has been through this 10 times, and by now they can add up the luxury suites, the sponsor buys, and the jersey sales in East Kreplakistan and pretty much know when the contract works. Most likely, even the on-field flops have been profitable failures. <Insert fave Argentine league forward here> costs your club money, Wayne Rooney doesn't. (Of course there's cap implications; in the funny money world of MLS cap values, adding a player like Rooney could cost you, to a certain extent, the ability to add higher dollar players somewhere else, but are we actually good enough to worry about that? It's a longshot we're going anywhere this year.) And as to whether he's an on-field flop, it's hard to know, but I doubt it. I thought Drogba was washed up, and he lit it up for about a year and a half before falling off (it was also a long shot they were going anywhere when he debuted, [it was actually their coach's debut as well, because they'd just fired the last guy] and they wound up making the Conference Final that year). Rooney comes in to the league as about the 3rd best finisher from the #9 position, and about the 2nd best passer out of it. That and much better first touch than the average MLS player will make up for a lot of mobility issues. United is at least a good contender for weakest forward situation in the league, so that shouldn't be real hard to improve. I think there are broadly two levels of MLS forward--there's the guys (ex. Villa, Wright-Phillips, etc) who you make a central part of your game plan--and then there are the 'good-enough-for-MLS marking' guys, where you give a guy 3 yards of space and dare him to shoot from anywhere more than about 15 yards out. Since the former won't cut the mustard with Rooney, that means they'll probably shadow him most of the game and put guys in the passing lanes to him, which should at least make space for the DC wingers and Acosta, who are legitimately good. If the wingers pin down the opposing fullbacks, then now we have more breathing room in midfield, an opportunity for our back line to play a little further up the pitch, and so on. Wayne Rooney is not a great signing, but he's a good one, one we should only pass up only if his demands are ridiculous, or if we have an alternative in a similar vein that's slightly younger.
Alexi Lalas with a thought experiment: Ignoring salaries, if you had to choose between Wayne Rooney and Bobby Wood right now, who would you pick? Now consider that Wood currently makes less than half of what Rooney makes. Sigh. These are the kinds of decisions that kill a team for a decade.
I don't see how. I have no doubt that he can still finish from a dangerous position better than all but a few (marquee) players in MLS. But in order to finish from a dangerous position, he has to get into a dangerous position with the ball. Even with the lower standard of defending in MLS (compared to the EPL), his ability to create space just isn't what it was. And he has to create *more* space that he did in England, because while the standard of defending is lower, so is the quality of the passing he'll be depending upon. It seems to me like the Everton fans' scouting had it right: he still has great skills in many areas, but the abilities he now lacks makes many of those skills irrelevant. I hope I'm dead wrong, though, because this is starting to look like a done deal.
I'll stick with what I said in an earlier post about Rooney: He'll be better than feared and worse than hoped.
I guess the point I'm working up to there is that it means, at the least, that you just can't leave him, because he'll kill you if you do. That alone makes our midfielders better. (Also, a killer on free kicks means your guys get manhandled less in the third.) But I also don't think his movement is 'gone' from the Everton games I watched. It's not up to the his former standards, nor those of a No 10 in the most high-paced, probably most physically powerful league in the world. He's not going to outrun anyone even in MLS at this stage. But his movement is better than Zlatan's at this point. Which I broadly agree with. He'll sell a bunch of jerseys and make the team noticeably better, while not really putting it on his back (no one will confuse him with Villa, but he won't be confused with Gerrard or Pirlo either, even if that's partially because he'll be playing a different position).
I'm not sure why you're so certain of that. He's already gone through the "I'm done with my career and I'm going to retire with my hometown club" phase of his career. This is a straight-up money grab for him, as it was for those two. That's a very bad sign to me.
Gerrard and Pirlo had to play D (and couldn't). And Gerrard had based his career up to that point on being able to cover >10km a game, when you took that away, everything else he could do was pretty containable in the middle third.
So where does our crack coaching staff slot Rooney in the lineup? He's been moved back to midfield IIRC, but we have a number of pretty good midfielders, even more when Canouse and Segura heal. Forward/striker is where I think we are weak (along with the back line, to a degree), but if he has really lost a step or two that might not work out. And I don't seeing him track back to defend, which Benny/Chad expect and which Mattocks, does, to a degree. A withdrawn forward is probably best for Rooney, but who sits? (A few mid-season injuries could make the decision for us.)I like the 3-5-2, but I'm not sure we have the defenders for it.
Good question, you're not the first to raise it. Everyone on DC United's forum likes this and whenever someone is making a change this is what is suggested. The problem is I don't think we've had the defenders for this since the Clinton administration.
We will need a formation change to include Rooney into the lineup. A modified 4-4-2 maybe. With a D-Mid, two outside mids and an attacking mid. I am not sure we could use the empty bucket as that would take Acosta off the field. Ousted Deleon-Brillant-Birbaum-Mora Asad-Durkin-Acosta-Ariola Mattocks-Rooney