The new boss David Moyes insists
he will get the best out of Wayne Rooney.
But
he warned the England ace: You are not bigger than Manchester United.
The
new Old Trafford gaffer is confident unsettled Rooney will stay, and plans to
put an arm around him. But he does not want the situation to overshadow the
start of the season.
No
contract talks are planned with Roo, currently out with a hamstring injury, which
has two years left on his existing deal.
And
Moyes said: “I’ve got to ensure it’s not just him and we don’t concentrate on
him. Manchester United isn’t about Wayne, Manchester United is about the team
and the club.
“We
are talking about him now and rightly so but what I won’t allow is Wayne Rooney
to become more important than the club and the team because that’s the heart of
it.
“This
is a chance for me to get Wayne right back to where he was. That is the
challenge and that’s a challenge I want to take on and see whether we can get
him back to the level he was a
“He’s
got a major role to play; we need to get him as many goals as we can.
“I may be
Scottish and we joke about it but the fact is we want England qualifying for
the World Cup because we need a strong national team and I like Roy Hodgson.
David talks tactics with Wilfried Zaha
“If I can
give him a really good Wayne Rooney, a confident Wayne Rooney, and then that
will benefit everybody.”
United will
let striker Rooney enter the final year on his contract next summer, with Moyes
making a decision on his future then?
Moyes
believes Rooney’s best position is up front rather than a deeper midfield role.
He said:
“Wayne can play up on his own, he can play dropped in. Overall my thought on
Wayne is, if for any reason we had an injury to Robin van Persie, we’ll need
him.
“I want to be
able to play the two of them; I want to use Danny Welbeck and Javier Hernandez
as well.
“I want to
give myself as many options as possible.
“It’s going
to be a time to see how I work with Wayne.
“Maybe in a
year’s time we might have to look at something else. The first year I have to
get a chance to see the players and how best to use them.”
Moyes,
meanwhile, admits the ‘hairdryer’ has already been plugged back in.
United
players who thought they had seen the last of a fiery Glaswegian temper have
already received a massive wake-up call.
After just a
few training sessions under Alex Ferguson’s successor, United’s players have
discovered Moyes has equally high standards — and those who fail to deliver
will suffer a tongue-lashing.
Asked whether
he had lost his temper, Moyes revealed: “I have done it already. I told them to
get their finger out and give a bit more. I have no problem with that.
“It was to
let them know what is going on. I cannot call it the hairdryer; I think someone
else has already done that!
“I feel
comfortable in the job but I still think there are bits of it that are strange.
“These
players are so used to seeing Sir Alex and I’ve been used to seeing the Everton
players, so there are bits of it that I’ve got to say that I can’t turn round
and say, ‘I’m cool with this, everything’s fine’ because there is a little bit
of unease.
“It’s like anyone going to a new job, you are
never quite sure. I do feel quite comfortable but yet quite wary that the real
stuff is to come.
“And until
the games start, as a football manager, you don’t know how you are going to
handle it. This time of year is the best time because you haven’t got the
games, everyone is getting some football.”
Moyes was
speaking honestly and openly over lunch here in the Thai capital, where he was
quizzed about the differences between his coaching methods and Ferguson’s.
He said: “I
coach more, I’m on the training ground — and that’s not to say Sir Alex wasn’t
a great coach but, with age and time, that changed.
“I might be a
bit more around it while Sir Alex gave time to other things — which I need to
get better at myself.
“Maybe next
time we do an interview in a few months I might say, ‘Right, I’m not doing any
of that’ or ‘I’ve been doing too much of something else’.
“But my focus
is not to change the reasons why people thought I was the right candidate for
the job — because if I was going to change it would mean I am starting again.
“I want to
work with the core of the players. I will delegate in the right areas and will
do other work.
“But I would
like it to be after I have finished all my football work with the players.
“I’ve said to
them all, ‘I’ll get to know you with three weeks away and will try to chat with
you, understand you more’.
“There will
be things I do that are different. But there are a lot of things that I see at
Manchester United that are great old-fashioned values, great traditions and I
will pass them on to whoever is the next manager because those things won’t
change.”
The main attraction of everybody was on Rooney, when the club was
in Thailand
