The England legend remains determined to crack the managerial game and must get it right at Home Park to be in the conversation for bigger jobs
Wayne Rooney is headline news. There's an inevitability to it – you don't carve out a career as one of the greatest players to ever wear a Manchester United and England shirt without attracting intense press scrutiny and your life constantly being under the microscope.
If Rooney the player had to face the music, Rooney the manager wasn't going to escape the noise, and while all's well when you're getting results in the managerial game, it can be a pretty harrowing place when things aren't going to plan.
Into his fourth permanent role in four years, and having failed to truly prove himself up to now, it feels like it's now or never for Rooney's managerial career as he navigates the lower echelons of the Championship with Plymouth Argyle.
So where's it been going wrong? How's it going now? And will Rooney ever be a contender to take his holy grail – the Manchester United job?
Getty A managerial reputation in tatters
Rooney's first taste of management came in November 2020 where he was entrusted with attempting to steer Derby County away from relegation from the Championship following the dismissal of Phillip Cocu. Already in place as a player-coach at Pride Park, this was his big chance – and he didn't make a bad fist of it.
Rooted to the bottom of the table and in their lowest league position for 12 years, Rooney took charge, first as part of a four-man interim team before getting the job permanently in January 2021, and would go on to settle for 21st place. Relegation avoided, mission accomplished – just about, it must be said, with the Rams surviving by a single point.
It would ultimately all end in misery, however. The following season saw Derby hit with deductions totaling 21 points, crippling their chances of survival. Indeed, the east Midlands club were relegated despite amassing 14 wins and 55 points – a tally that would've put them in 17th place had they not been punished by the EFL.
Rooney decided to step down from his position following relegation to League One, and headed back to the United States and D.C. United less than a month later. It didn't go so well.
Under their former striker, D.C. finished plum last in the Eastern Conference and then followed that up by failing to make the MLS play-offs for the second season in a row. Rooney's days were numbered.
Onto Birmingham City. Out of nowhere, the Championship play-off hopefuls – who had seen Tom Brady join as a minority owner just a couple of months before, raised eyebrows when they sacked John Eustace in October 2023 and bet all their chips on Rooney – it was bold, bizarre and by no means a guarantee of success.
It ended terribly, for all concerned.
After winning just two of his 15 games in charge, Rooney was shown the door. Birmingham would go on to be relegated and the Manchester United legend was shouldering the majority of the blame. His managerial reputation was in the gutter and at the point of no return, or so it seemed…
AdvertisementGetty Images SportPlymouth find their 'perfect match'
Plymouth Argyle and Wayne Rooney. A shock appointment that, just a few years ago, would've made it as a screenshot on the Out of Context Football Manager Twitter feed. But here it was, an opportunity for Rooney, and possibly his last-chance-saloon as a manager.
Following the Birmingham debacle, the former England captain had been out of work for a little over four months but he was in no mood to give up. Speaking via , he outlined his intentions to "bounce back" and that he was a "fighter", determined to rise off the canvas and keep on punching. And what's more – he'd had enough of being sat on the sofa at home, twiddling his thumbs. It was getting "weird".
It came out of the blue, but ahead of the 2024-25 season, Plymouth emerged as Rooney's salvation. Just like Derby back in 2021, Plymouth had survived relegation by the skin of their teeth. Change was needed, Rooney, they felt, was needed, with the 39-year-old reportedly winning a race consisting of as many as 80 candidates to land the job.
Argyle chief executive Andrew Parkinson called it a "perfect match" – time will tell. So how's it been going so far?
When Wayne Rooney walks through the door, whatever level of football you're playing at, you're going to take notice. After a full pre-season with his new manager, midfielder Adam Randell complemented Rooney's tactical awareness, commenting on how "approachable" he found England's second highest-ever goalscorer, despite all his enviable achievements as a player.
Come the start of the season, though, it couldn't have gone much worse.
Plymouth were ripped apart by Sheffield Wednesday, losing 4-0 and being completely played off the park – allowing 31 attempts at their goal attests to that. No one said it was going to be easy.
Since then, results it's fair to say, have been up and down. Of their 15 league matches to date, Argyle have put 16 points on the board – that's four wins, four draws and seven losses. They've only won one of their last five in the league but find themselves outside of the relegation spots and in 18th place – a 1-0 victory over fellow strugglers Portsmouth undoubtedly helping clear some of the doom and gloom.
Not great, it's fair to say, but not a complete disaster either. And Rooney's certainly not lost any of that fire that became synonymous with his playing career – a rage-induced red card during a narrow win over Blackburn proved as much.
Getty Images EntertainmentA big family sacrifice
Before a ball had even been kicked, or cone laid out, the Rooney family had some significant decisions to make after the Plymouth role was rubber-stamped – the most obvious being where they'd all live, and whether upping sticks to the south Devon coast was workable.
To put it simply – it takes five hours to drive from Rooney's family home in Cheshire's Golden Triangle down to Plymouth, some 260 miles away. The logical solution would've been to move his entire family – wife Coleen and their four boys – to Devon with him, something that was considered but ultimately ruled out.
Speaking on the topic, Coleen told the in September: "We thought long and hard about it (moving to Devon) but with the kids it didn't work.
"Kai's now in year 10 and just starting GCSE prep and everything’s going well with football, and the other boys are all settled at school, so it didn’t seem fair on the children to pick them up and take them away, and start in a whole new place. It’s manageable. It's life. Other couples and families have similar situations and have to get on with it."
The end result has seen Rooney purchase a flat in the city, with Coleen admitting that they only see him "a couple of times a week".
Forget the football side of things for a moment, taking the manager's job at Plymouth was clearly a significant – and, to some extent, lifechanging – decision for the Rooney family, with the 39-year-old sacrificing a lot of quality time with his wife and children to pursue his managerial dream. It surely takes its toll.
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Karaoke, pasties & scrutiny
There's no denying it. Rightly or wrongly, Rooney is the most scrutinised manager in the Football League. Wherever he goes, whatever he does and whatever he says, it's going to make headline news. It comes with the territory of being the most recognisable name and face of English football – David Beckham aside – of the past two decades. And to be fair to Rooney, he often tackles it head on.
One thing that wasn't on our bingo card so soon after his appointment, however, was the sight of Rooney singing his heart out – albeit terribly – at a pub on the south coast. As expected, it went viral on social media.
On this occasion, though, it was for the right reasons, with Manchester United's all-time top scorer mixing with locals and showing that, despite his global status and fame, he's a pretty normal bloke at heart.
The headlines in November weren't quite as complementary.
The likened Rooney's life in Devon to that of a "bachelor", claiming he enjoys "boozy nights and takeaways" while in the temporary arrangement of living away from his family. That, and whether he's getting "stuck into the pasties", as one customer at a local bar speculated, can't be confirmed, but there have been suggestions that Coleen's concerned.
A source told in September: "Coleen got a bit of a shock when she saw Wayne recently. She's worried he's not taking enough care of himself now that he's living on his own.
"It was always going to be a big adjustment for him when he gave up playing football professionally. He was at the peak of his fitness during that time. Coleen made sure he ate healthily and he was always running about and playing footie with the boys. Now, she feels he's not putting himself first, and worries that he's struggling to cope without her looking after him."