Plymouth owner alludes to ‘unclear’ Birmingham City scenario following Wayne Rooney’s arrival.
Plymouh Argyle owner Simon Hallett has explained why they did not look “too hard” at Wayne Rooney’s stats during his catastrophic tenure at Birmingham City before appointing him as manager.
Rooney was named Ian Foster’s replacement last week, as the former Manchester United striker returned to the bench after being fired by Birmingham City in January.
The former England international struggled at St Andrew’s, losing nine of his 15 appearances. His stint set the tone for the Blues, who dropped out of the top six and into a relegation battle that they eventually lost. When Rooney left, many people assumed he would not return to management for some time.
However, Plymouth has provided him a way back into the dugout, and Hallett claims Rooney’s experiences at Derby and DC United were the most scrutinized before he was hired.
“Well, first of all, you can use data to analyse style of play, and Wayne’s style of play is consistent with what we want to see in an Argyle team,” Hallett stated in an interview on the club’s official website.
“Results have been dismal – we know his win/loss ratio is not especially appealing – but actual results are not a very good indicator of a manager’s influence on a squad. Looking at the underlying data, we can see that DC United improved both their offensive and defense, and they were near the top of the league in terms of opportunity generation.
“At Derby, he strengthened the defensive, but at Birmingham, the position is a little murky. He stepped in for 15 games at a time when they were sixth in the Championship, but only a couple of points behind 13th/14th, and the results were clearly very, very awful, and it’s actually difficult to see very much in the underlying
“But what we do know is that Wayne was required to play a style of football that he felt was inconsistent with the players that he had there, so we’re not particularly looking very hard at the data at Birmingham, but rather at Derby and DC United, where he improved both teams quite considerably.”
