Former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan has provided a scathing assessment of Wayne Rooney’s managerial reign at Birmingham City.
Jordan has been openly critical of the club’s decision to hire Rooney in the first place, questioning the Manchester United legend’s body of work.
The talkSPORT personality previously labelled Rooney ‘a fool’ when he left Derby County amid the Rams’ financial struggles, questioning whether he could get a bigger job.
When Birmingham replaced John Eustace with Rooney, with the club sitting in 6th place in the Championship, Jordan criticised the decision, doubting the Liverpudlian’s credentials as a manager.
Now, over two months later, Birmingham are 17th in the table, with two wins in 11, and fans are increasingly restless and negative towards Rooney.
Speaking on talkSPORT, Jordan gave his verdict on Rooney’s current stint as Blues boss. He stated, “Playing 11 games and getting eight points is relegation form. You continue that, you get relegated. You extrapolate that over a season, you get 32 points, you finish bottom of the league.
“Do I think that will continue? Probably not. Do I think that we’ve seen anything vaguely resembling what Wayne Rooney might be as a manager? No, at no point.”
He continued, “They stayed up, barely, with Derby. He’s gone to America. He’s done nothing in America, and he’s started slowly at Birmingham. So I don’t know what we can say.
“It almost feels like you have to be almost apologetic for being critical of Wayne Rooney, but there’s nothing to criticise or praise. There’s just nothing there. It’s just Wayne Rooney. If it was any other manager, without Wayne Rooney’s name, you’d be looking at it and going, ‘What is this?’.”
Jordan continues to say that he wonders if the Birmingham owners hired Rooney due to his name. When asked by co-host Jim White whether he has an agenda against Rooney, Jordan responded bluntly, “I’ve got an agenda against people getting jobs that don’t merit it.”
“I don’t like it; I think people should earn the right to have a job. But I also think people should be given an opportunity. And if this is an opportunity for Wayne Rooney, after 11 games, it’s an opportunity he’s currently not taking.
“I think anybody in their right mind would say, even if they had an agenda, that he was fortunate to get this job. So if you’re fortunate to get this job, it’s really incumbent upon you not to deliver 0.7 points a game. Because if you continue with that vein of form, you’re going to get relegated, and who wants that?”
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