Wayne Rooney has admitted that a group of senior players took charge of the dressing room during his time at Manchester United.
Rooney is currently enjoying a spectacular start to life in Major League Soccer with D.C. United, scoring 10 goals in 18 appearances for his new side, but he still keeps track of how his former teams are getting on in the Premier League.
Amid suggestions of unrest in the Old Trafford dressing room – with rifts said to have grown between manager Jose Mourinho and players such as Paul Pogba and Alexis Sanchez – Rooney has claimed that no such situation would have been allowed to develop during his time at the club.
Rooney revealed that five players in particular lightened Alex Ferguson’s load by forcing any new signings to leave their egos at the dressing room door.
“That would never be allowed to happen,” Rooney said in an interview with the Men In Blazers TV show to be broadcast on NBCSN on Monday afternoon.
Just imagine what a prime Rooney would have done to MLS goalkeepers 😱 https://t.co/u3rftmvEIf
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“The likes of Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, Rio Ferdinand, myself – players who had Man United in them and wanted the best for that club – would never allow anyone to mess that up.
“We controlled the dressing room ourselves. Alex Ferguson didn’t really need to control that. The players had the trust of the manager to do that themselves.”
Mourinho has come in for plenty of criticism this season, especially with regards to his footballing philosophy, but Rooney believes that Ferguson’s United wasn’t quite as cavalierly attacking as some like to believe.
“People talk about our team – especially in relation to Manchester United now – and say it was attack, attack, attack. But we actually weren’t,” Rooney said.
“A lot of games we played on the counter attack, drew teams into us and then broke with pace. We did it to Arsenal.
“It wasn’t all ‘let’s just go out and attack’ it was a bit more calculated against certain opponents which brought the best out of myself.
“We had the team built to hit teams on the break and we were devastating at it.”
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