In a different chain of events, Birmingham City’s home fixture against Leicester City might have produced the latest episode of football’s most colourful melodrama.
Wagatha Christie to some, the Scousetrap to others, that courtroom theatre between the Rooney family and the Vardy family captivated the gossip columns and no shortage of football fans.
This was supposed to mark the first time Wayne Rooney, England men’s second-highest scorer and now Birmingham City manager, had met Jamie Vardy, the Leicester forward and a former international team-mate of Rooney’s, since the court case involving their respective wives, Coleen and Rebekah, in the summer of 2022.
Vardy, remember, lost her legal case against Rooney, costing her millions in legal bills after Rooney accused her of leaking stories from her private Instagram account to journalists at The Sun newspaper. Vardy, who still denies the claims, sued for libel but to no avail. Since then, the affair has been the subject of a Disney documentary, as well as a West End play in London.
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Little wonder that Sky Sports selected the match for television coverage as a standalone Monday evening fixture. As it transpired, the broadcaster was deprived of the detective derby, because Vardy, who had missed the previous two Leicester fixtures, remained absent with a niggle. Rooney, let us not forget, himself spoke in the witness box at the High Court, where he claimed he was asked by the then-England manager Roy Hodgson to ask Vardy to encourage his wife to “calm down” her media activities during the European Championship in 2016. Jamie, speaking outside court, said Wayne was talking “nonsense”.
Wayne and Coleen Rooney attend court during the ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial (Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
With Vardy out of the picture, and the two wives not in attendance, the occasion was reduced to a mere football match. As such, the microscope fell squarely on Rooney, who turned 38 in October and is now on his third managerial job, after previously coaching Derby County and D.C. United. While former England team-mates Gary Neville, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard all received accelerated opportunities in the top flight of English, Spanish and Scottish football, Rooney has been required to demonstrate greater humility and take a more circuitous route to the top. Rooney, who scored 253 goals in 559 appearances for Manchester United, has rarely limited his ambition as a manager.
“Everton and Manchester United are the two clubs,” Rooney told The Athletic last summer. “I grew up supporting Everton and spent a long time at United. You hope in the future something becomes available and my job is to make sure I’m ready.”
Indeed, it is worth remembering that Rooney’s self-assurance is sufficiently high that in January 2022 he declined the opportunity to interview for the vacancy at Everton, when he questioned whether the environment was right for him to enter. Now, with Everton on the rise under Sean Dyche, it feels improbable that the chance to coach Everton will come around for him any time soon. Increasingly, that feels as much a reflection on Rooney’s personal development as anything Everton may be doing.
A home assignment against Leicester was always going to be an unenviable mission against a side who are sauntering towards promotion to the Premier League, yet Rooney’s record now reads played 11, won two since he joined Birmingham in early October. This was a seventh defeat and a team that was fifth when he replaced John Eustace now finds itself 17th in the Championship and only six points clear of the relegation zone. Birmingham lost 3-2 on the night but Leicester created enough chances to have won by far more.
Birmingham have fallen 11 places down the Championship table in the two months since Wayne Rooney replaced John Eustace (Photo: Cameron Smith/Getty Images)
This was not the plan when Rooney signed a three-and-a-half-year contract in October. The club’s chief executive Garry Cook finally got his man, after previously trying to sign Rooney as a player for Manchester City in 2010, and as a manager when Cook was chairman of the Saudi Pro League earlier in the year. Cook, a former Nike executive and no stranger to a sales pitch, described Rooney’s arrival as a “defining moment for the football club”. Cook also promised “no-fear football” and stated his intent to make Birmingham “a football powerhouse”.
The club’s former manager Eustace grew up locally but a club statement following his departure said the board and Eustace were not “fully aligned on the importance of implementing a winning mentality and a culture of ambition across the entire football club”.
Birmingham are in a moment of change. In July, the U.S. investors Shelby Companies — named after the prominent Shelby family in the Birmingham-set drama Peaky Blinders — took over the club. Shelby is a subsidiary of Knighthead Capital Management. Fronted by executive Tom Wagner, optimism returned to a club that had too often been a basketcase under previous incumbents, such as the Hong Kong hairdresser Carson Yeung and Trillion Trophy Asia. Birmingham have not finished above 17th in the Championship for the past seven seasons, and this year is the club’s 13th in the division.
Birmingham’s new owners secured some very simple wins. For starters, the club’s home stadium St. Andrew’s now has hot water running again, which has not always been the case in recent years, while the club have also re-opened two lower tiers of the ground and invested in new hospitality areas to woo guests and potential investors. The club are also seeking to reconnect with the local community, delivering Christmas presents to 11,000 young people under the care of Birmingham Children’s Trust this winter.
They have also attracted global appeal, as the NFL icon Tom Brady joined the fun, as a minority shareholder and chair of the club’s advisory board. Wagner claimed the announcement of Brady’s arrival received over 17 billion impressions on social media globally. Earlier in the season, Brady joined supporters in a local pub for pre-match drinks.
Wagner told Bloomberg TV: “Really, what it’s about is bringing his expertise following a 23-year career in the NFL. His level of excellence never tapered off, so it’s about bringing those learnings to Birmingham… he will have a significant role in health, wellness, nutrition. Effectively, human sustainability and will play a role in how we think about player interaction.”
Birmingham have since recruited two performance consultants from the U.S., Peter Cummings and Rob Brennan, who work for TBRx, a company founded by Brady’s former body coach Alex Guerrero.
The TBRx website says it uses “evidence-based techniques that combine hands-on manual therapy and functional movement exercises to promote swift healing and pain elimination” and that this “empowers individuals to embrace total body recovery and continue pursuing their passions without limitations”. It claims to provide a “total body recovery, so you can do what you love, longer”.
Birmingham’s sporting director Craig Gardner said the pair “are writing a philosophy from scratch”, while adding that a Brady-backed nutritionist has also visited the players.
For now, however, optimism is tempered by a downturn in results. Birmingham fans experienced a similar drop-off when Gary Rowett was unexpectedly sacked in 2017 and also replaced by a venerated former player in Gianfranco Zola, which almost led to relegation, and some fear a repeat under Rooney. He has recruited his former United team-mate John O’Shea to the club’s coaching staff, as well as the ex-Chelsea left-back Ashley Cole. Yet so far, Rooney’s attempts to morph a side that was direct and dogged under Eustace into a team that presses high and expresses itself has proved turbulent. At D.C. United, Rooney in the end reverted to a more direct approach when he was unable to imprint his desired style on the team.
Whether Rooney is truly suited to this assignment remains an open question. While in the U.S., he told The Athletic: “A lot of coaches have their own way of playing. Identity. Philosophy. I’m not really big on the two words, to be honest. I’ve got a way in which I want to play, principles of play in terms of hard work, being hard to beat and being organised.”
This time around, Rooney appears determined to persist. He said his team are becoming fitter, which is required to play the high-octane style he is seeking. But he accepted they were naive to lose two goals in transitions against Leicester, while he was also frustrated about the way in which his team stopped applying pressure against the ball for a period before and after half-time.
“It is the details,” Rooney said. “We want to set traps and be aggressive but also to do it at the right times and not be stupid. It is so important that when the first player goes, they all go with him, because if one does not go, it has a huge impact.”
Jordan James, a 19-year-old midfielder who scored twice, insisted afterwards the players are buying in to the manager’s demands for intensity.
At Birmingham, several players were baffled by the call to sack Eustace in October, particularly after a bright start to the season, and the players were only informed 10 minutes before the club’s announcement. Many, however, sympathise with Rooney, who has been tasked with imposing a style of play on a set of players who are, at best, learning the ropes and appear better suited to different approaches. The team’s Christmas party came earlier this month, after a defeat, and some players chose to stay away because they deemed it inappropriate to be seen out celebrating. The club have also warned Rooney that major cash injections in the January transfer window are unlikely because Birmingham are treading a fine line to comply with profit-and-loss regulations.
If there is cause for optimism, it can be found in a fixture list that offers up Plymouth Argyle, Stoke City and Bristol City before the turn of the year, all of whom reside in the bottom half of the table, while Rooney will be hoping a long injury list clears up.
Upon arriving in the Midlands, he reflected on previous challenges at D.C. United and, in particular, Derby. There he had performed creditably when the club were struck down by huge points deductions and a dreadful financial situation.
“It’d be nice to actually be able to focus on the training sessions and the games, and having a team above me I can trust to make sure everything is OK,” said Rooney. “At my two previous clubs, maybe that wasn’t the case.”
This time around, Rooney’s coaching and managerial talents must truly come to the fore.