Explained: How Wayne Rooney’s ‘grow a pair’ jibe will tell Tom Brady & Birmingham who is too ‘fragile’ for push towards the Premier League

The Manchester United and England legend has endured a tough start to life as manager at St Andrew’s. He was acquired shortly after NFL icon Brady became an investor in the West Midlands, with the plan being for a big-name coach to lead the club back towards the Premier League. Rooney is yet to deliver on expectations, but he has been pointing a finger of blame in the direction of underperforming players.

Former Wolves and West Brom striker Don Goodman has said while speaking to BoyleSports, who offer the latest EFL Betting, of why there could be benefits to a rant from the most demanding of characters: “The pressure will be there because he (Rooney) expects better of his team. There are only two games where most observers would have expected Birmingham to win - Sheffield Wednesday, which they did, and against Rotherham. Not only did they not beat Rotherham, they didn’t play particularly well. What compounds it is that it was on their own patch. That element of frustration came to the surface with what he’d seen. The comment he made afterwards might not be the worst thing he’s ever done. If I was a Birmingham player, I’d be thinking, ‘I’m playing for my future now’. This is an ambitious club with ambitious owners. Wayne Rooney clearly wants to do very, very well. Even if the owners sack Wayne Rooney and bring in another manager, their ambition is clear, so the only way for those players to stay there and be part of those long-term plans is to play well. Not enough of them are doing that at the moment.”

Goodman went on to say of Rooney and Birmingham beginning to identify who has the stomach for a fight and which players can be trusted in a bid to ultimately push on into the Championship promotion picture: “Players are more fragile now, they’re more sensitive, (but) Rooney hasn’t dug any individual players out, which is important. The players have got two choices. The players can have the attitude, ‘I’ll show you, I want to stay in the team, I want to be part of the success story’, or they can be annoyed at him. I can’t relate to players being annoyed at the manager and not producing. I played for some managers that I really, really did not get on with, but I had some of the greatest moments of my career on the pitch. As a player, you have an individual responsibility to look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘have I done everything I can to be the best version of myself?’ I’m not too sure how many of those Birmingham players, at this moment in time, can look at themselves and say that they have.”

Rooney has picked up just one win and five points from his eight games in charge of Birmingham, with the club slipping out of the play-off places and into the bottom-half of the table. The Blues will be back in action on Friday when taking in a short trip to Midlands neighbours Coventry.