On 2 January 2024, Birmingham City FC shared a heartbreaking statement as they announced they were removing Wayne Rooney from being the manager of the second-tier football team after just 15 games.
This news made fans very angry at the incompetence and greed of Birmingham’s owners, who had made the decision to place Rooney in the position of head coach John Eustace, thereby sacking a very successful coach in the name of “the culture of the football club.”
The Manchester United legend returned to English football on 11 October 2023, when he was named manager of Birmingham City, an EFL Championship team, for a three-and-a-half-year term.
Ten days later, Rooney made his debut against his old Man Utd and England teammate Michael Carrick, the manager of Middlesbrough FC, where Birmingham lost 1-0. His squad dropped from sixth to eighteenth place in the standings after he only managed one point in his first five games.
On November 25, 2023, Rooney’s first triumph as manager of Birmingham came from a 2–1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday FC, which was the bottom team of the series. After winning just twice in 15 games, Rooney was therefore fired by the team on Tuesday, leaving Birmingham in 20th place out of 24 teams.
While the start of the tier-two season under the guidance of John Eustace saw hopes of Birmingham FC being promoted to the Premier League, it was quickly crushed by Rooney’s disappointing performance, which now holds the team in fear of being relegated to League One.
Fans are, therefore, reasonably infuriated at Birmingham’s owners and the NFL legend Tom Brady, who is also a minority owner and advisory board chairman of the football club, for being so inexperienced that they hired a big name to replace a coach who was in the process of building a highly successful team.
Club statement: Wayne Rooney
— Birmingham City FC (@BCFC) January 2, 2024
Owners’ Greed Ignored Eustace’s Excellence
One month after Birmingham was taken over by Shelby Holding Companies, an American-based financial firm led by American financier Tom Wagner, Brady became a minority owner of the team. This move was made as a reference to the popular television series “Peaky Blinders,” which is set in the Birmingham neighborhood of Small Heath, where the team’s St Andrew’s Stadium is located.
Long-suffering supporters of Birmingham, who had last seen a Premier League game in 2011, welcomed the takeover with enthusiasm at first, and Brady quickly won them over by buying drinks at a pub prior to a victory against Leeds back in August.
However, the initial goodwill that Brady and the new owners had with them quickly vanished when the team made the unexpected choice in October to fire Eustace and bring in Rooney.
The timing was especially puzzling because Rooney had recently left D.C. United after failing to lead them into the MLS play-offs, while Eustace had just overseen impressive victories over Huddersfield Town AFC and local rivals West Bromwich Albion FC.
In his first season in command, Eustace had led Birmingham to their highest point total in seven years against an off-field backdrop of instability as the club went through a takeover process. They won three of their first four games the next season, finishing nine points clear of the relegation zone, but a slump in performance eventually led the owners to turn to Rooney.
Rooney’s Failure At Football Management
For Blues supporters, reading the lengthy statement Birmingham issued when they fired Eustace must be agonizing right now. CEO Garry Cook wrote a 789-word letter to supporters in which he discussed “creating a winning culture” and “aspiring to be world-class” seven times using the term “ambition.”
Platitudes were used to thank Eustace for avoiding relegation, but the underlying message was that their plans for the club did not include the unglamorous coach, who played in less than 50 Premier League games and only held a managerial position with non-league Kidderminster Harriers.
However, their grave error was assuming—almost solely on the basis of his on-field accomplishments—that Rooney did. When he retired, Rooney was the highest-scoring player in England’s history. With 253 goals to his credit, he leads Manchester United in scoring and has won numerous trophies, including five Premier League titles and the Champions League.
When the great striker was named coach by Birmingham chairman Wagner, he referred to Rooney as “a born winner.” However, Wagner had conveniently overlooked the fact that Rooney’s managing resume was far less remarkable than his trophy-filled playing career.
As the coach of Derby County and D.C. United, Rooney had only won 38 of his 139 games or just 27% of the games. With a total of 138 goals, less than one goal per game had been scored by his two teams, while they had allowed 186 goals against them.
