Jamie Carragher has gone from one of the great Premier League defenders to one of the most refreshingly honest pundits in world football, all in the space of a few years.
The Liverpool legend has a considered approach to his discussion of the beautiful game and he has used that same mentality to rubbish the giddy excitement United fans struggled to stifle when their supposedly ‘past it’ striker netted a hat-trick midweek.
But Carragher, writing in his Daily Mail column, hastens to add that Rooney isn’t the over-the-hill player that certain critics were dismissing him as either.
‘He isn’t ‘back’. That needs to be clear. Wayne Rooney may have enjoyed his best night for some time with a Champions League hat-trick in Bruges — but don’t take that as a sign he is ready to roll back the years.
‘Yet, just as importantly, he isn’t finished. He never was finished.
‘Plenty of critics will have wanted to write him off, particularly as he had started the season slowly and had been without a goal since early April, but it is dangerous to make assumptions about the highest-profile players.’
Carragher draws comparisons between Wayne Rooney and other big-name English players like Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen, who came in for criticism only to prove the naysayers wrong.
“After the World Cup in 2002, Michael found himself in the spotlight. He only had one goal after the opening 10 games and it was asked whether his spark had gone; then we went to Manchester City and he took frustrations out on them with a hat-trick. His tally at the end of the season was 32.”
The mindset of these old-school players is what sticks out for Carragher, and he warns us not to take their impact on the game for granted as they will be gone before we know it.
‘He (Rooney), like Terry and Gerrard, is a born fighter. When things are hard, he is exactly the type of character you would want on your side.
‘Rooney and Terry are among the last of a dying breed. We should cherish them before they are gone for good.’
