Plymouth owner Derby County and Wayne Rooney admission amid ‘unclear’ Birmingham situation

Plymouth Argyle owner Simon Hallett has revealed how they analyzed Wayne Rooney’s record at Derby County before appointing him as manager.

Rooney was confirmed as Ian Foster’s successor last week as the former Manchester United striker returned to the dugout after being sacked by Birmingham City in January.

The former England international endured a torrid spell at St Andrew’s, losing nine of 15 games. His tenure set the trend for the Blues, who fell out of the top six and into a relegation battle they eventually lost. When Rooney left, many thought it would be a while before he was back in charge.

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However, Plymouth offered him a way back into the dugout and Hallett looked at Rooney’s data at Derby, where he did an admirable job trying the circumstances with the club in administration and being hit with two deductions worth 21 points.

“Well, first of all, you can use data to look at style of play and Wayne’s style of play is consistent with what we want to see in an Argyle team,” Hallett said in an interview with the website the official of the club.

“The results have been poor – we know his win/loss ratio isn’t particularly attractive – but actual results are not a terribly good way of looking at how much influence a manager has had on a team. Looking at the basic data, we can see at DC United that they improved their offense and defense, and when it came to chance creation, they were almost at the top of the league.

“At Derby he improved the defense and at Birmingham it’s a bit of a blur. He came on for 15 games at a time when they were sixth in the Championship but only a few points off 13th/14th, and the results, in clearly, they were very, very weak, and in fact it’s hard to see very much in the underlying data.

“But what we do know is that Wayne was asked to play a style of football that he thought was not consistent with the players he had there, so we’re not looking too closely at the Birmingham data but rather Derby and DC United, where he improved both teams quite a bit.”

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