Wayne Rooney

Seems a bit harsh imho. IMHO if you appoint a manger outside of a transfer window they deserve atleast a transfer window to atleast bring in a few players that fit what the manager wants to do. Sure if they get some players and it gets to a couple of months after the window and things haven't picked up then sure in modern football removing them might be justified

 

The ‘harsh’ bit was the removal of John Eustace as manager, who had taken Birmingham to 6th in the Championship at the time he was sacked!
The same players have won just two games since he was removed, and a ‘vanity’ celebrity manager in Rooney installed.
Quite clearly it wasn’t working and if you are going to dispose of a manager, then doing it just before the transfer window makes sense for the reasons you have stated.

 

Sure that was also harsh but if the owners make that decision in the first place the owners clearly had a style of play reason and having done that you surely have to give a transfer window so they cab start implementing that style

 

I don't think they did have a 'style of play' though, they just wanted a 'big name' in football. Rooney was an idiot for taking the job, it was always only going to go one way. As a result, he's going to find it very difficult to get back into management now.

 

I'm not sure using the MLS as a benchmark of a managers quality is fair. You could put Pep in charge of an MLS team and its pot luck if he is a success due to the complexities of player recruitment with various drafts (including situations such as expansion drafts where when a new team is added each team can only protect a handful of players and then the new team(s) can draft any other player on your roster), salary caps, designated players etc etc. And not to mention recruitment has much less input from the manager than even the system we have seen European Football move to in the last 20 years, it follows more the systems we see in the likes of the NFL, NBA and NHL where a recruitment team under the General Manager is running it, the manager who is little more than a head coach is on a completely different branch

There is also the travel issue, the MLS has perhaps the biggest advantage to the home team of any league due to the distances away teams have top travel. And teams in the 'corners' of the country often have things worse than those that are maybe more central. DC isn't one of the worst but it is still fairly far up on the North-East coast so has decent amount of travel

There is also the luck of the draw, with the league split into two conferences where you play everyone in your conference twice and then have to play 6 or 7 matches against random teams in the other conference. You can actually get lucky and get weaker teams or all the stronger teams or a mix. The Western Conference also has to play TWO teams in their conference 3 times rather than twice. And then you can dominate the league but to win you then have to play the knockout playoffs and you could just get unlucky in these.

So he might not have done great but the MLS just isn't a good baromater. TBH just as @Frank Castle said Birmingham was a bad choice for him going to the MLS also was. He actual banked a fair bit of credit at Derby because of the mess he was facing there with the transfer bans, the paper thin squad, the injuries and then the point deductions. A smarter move after Derby or even staying and trying to get them back up would have been smarter than going to a league where there is a lot of pot luck

 

As a manager Rooney has achieved zilch. Derby relegated, DC United failed miserably and latterly only winning two games in fifteen at Birmingham. He may well have been a great player, but as a manager he is a total flop.