The Big Bang Theory

Before the game against Macedonia, England manager Steve McClaren is credited with promising that Rooney was ready to ‘explode’. We now know that he was wrong. The nearest Wayne came to ‘exploding’ was a cumulative welling up of anger against the match officials for a series of perceived injustices, mostly against himself – yet even this was expressed with a kind of restrained vehemence, like a naughty schoolboy muttering from the back of the room in a voice calculated to drop just short of the teacher’s desk.

Everyone (apart from that incurable Rooney worshipper, Mike Parry) could see that the boy did not have a good game – though no-one could fault him for effort. It was simply that he played too little and protested too much and when he was substituted in the 74th minute, it felt almost like an act of clemency.

His clear failure on this occasion reawakens earnest debate about the causes of his poor form and in particular the most appropriate way of dealing with it. And what it all seems to come down to is whether Wayne should be dropped – a question which appears to have divided the so-called experts.

In some respects, the very suggestion that Rooney should be omitted from the England team is a shocking one – not because he, or anyone else, should have a divine right to inclusion, but because the cause has attracted support even from the likes of Sam Allardyce, who argues that it would be unfair to continue to play the boy because he “is putting himself under far too much pressure”.

The contrary argument is that, far from needing a rest, Rooney desperately needs games if he is to recover his confidence after disruptions caused by injury and suspension – and in any case, injuries to Dean Ashton and Andy Johnson leave England with no adequate replacements.

Perhaps the real key to this is not the player but the manager. With the benefit of hindsight, Steve McClaren might regret all that talk of Rooney being ready to explode and the pressure it may have imposed in a situation where too much pressure already existed. Who knows, he might even handle it right this time and succeed in getting the best out of this very talented player (which after all, is what top class management is all about). Because if he doesn’t, the consequences might be very serious indeed. And this time the talk could be of implosion rather than explosion.