{"id":294904,"date":"2023-11-11T23:10:55","date_gmt":"2023-11-11T23:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportstoft.com\/?p=294904"},"modified":"2023-11-11T23:10:55","modified_gmt":"2023-11-11T23:10:55","slug":"wayne-rooney-insists-birmingham-are-improving-despite-latest-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportstoft.com\/soccer\/wayne-rooney-insists-birmingham-are-improving-despite-latest-defeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Wayne Rooney insists Birmingham are &apos;IMPROVING&apos; despite latest defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Wayne Rooney insists Birmingham City are &#8216;IMPROVING&#8217; despite his side&#8217;s defeat to Sunderland meaning they have taken just one point out of a possible 15 since he took charge<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Rooney&#8217;s Birmingham City side crashed to a 3-1 defeat against Sunderland\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Their form has nosedived since he controversially replaced John Eustace\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Man Utd are NOT good enough to have a ball-playing keeper &#8211;\u00a0It&#8217;s All Coming Up<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Wayne Rooney remains confident he can turn things around at Birmingham &#8211; but admits the forthcoming international break will be a crucial spell in his tenure at St Andrew&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Rooney&#8217;s return to English football has hardly gone to plan, with the Blues&#8217; latest 3-1 defeat at Sunderland meaning he has picked up just one point from a possible 15 since taking charge of the club.<\/p>\n<p>Birmingham&#8217;s form has nosedived since John Eustace was controversially moved aside last month, but Rooney can see light at the end of the tunnel despite his side&#8217;s struggles.<\/p>\n<p>However, he concedes the next two weeks will be crucial as he attempts to improve his players&#8217; fitness levels and get his views across to his squad.<\/p>\n<p>Rooney said: &#8216;The opposition we&#8217;ve played have been very good teams. The first couple of games, I didn&#8217;t think we were good enough, but there was obviously a lot of information we were trying to get across to the players.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/11\/16\/77684361-12737797-image-a-18_1699720399258.jpg\" height=\"371\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Wayne Rooney&#8217;s poor start at Birmingham City continued with a 3-1 loss away to Sunderland<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/11\/16\/77684357-12737797-image-a-26_1699720454310.jpg\" height=\"400\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Rooney insists Birmingham are improving despite picking up just one point since his arrival<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/11\/16\/77684353-12737797-image-a-27_1699720475651.jpg\" height=\"385\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Birmingham&#8217;s form has nosedived since Rooney&#8217;s arrival (Nectar Triantis pictured scoring Sunderland&#8217;s second goal)<\/p>\n<p>Your browser does not support iframes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;It was a big change in what they&#8217;d been doing, and if you look at the last three games, then as a team, I thought there were positives from Southampton, a lot of positives from Ipswich and then certainly positives again here against Sunderland.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I&#8217;ve seen improvements, but we obviously need to start improving the results, and I really believe we will. What I&#8217;m seeing in training, and what I&#8217;m seeing from the players in matches now, is really positive.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I think this break will help, just in terms of getting the fitness work into them. That&#8217;s important in terms of how I want my team to play. We&#8217;re gradually seeing improvement in that, and it&#8217;s a good opportunity for us now to really spend some time with the players.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Rooney was pleased with aspects of his side&#8217;s display on Wearside, with Koji Miyoshi&#8217;s first-half goal cancelling out an opener from Jobe Bellingham.<\/p>\n<p>However, he was frustrated with the defensive lapses that led to a second-half own goal from Dion Sanderson and a late strike from Sunderland substitute Adil Aouchiche.<\/p>\n<p>He said: &#8216;The defending has to be better. We conceded three goals from inside the six-yard box, and that&#8217;s a real disappointment.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Sunderland&#8217;s pre-match preparations were disrupted when Dennis Cirkin suffered a hamstring injury during the warm-up, and having promoted Nectarios Traintis to the starting line-up, Tony Mowbray was delighted with the Australian youngster&#8217;s performance on his full Championship debut.<\/p>\n<p>The Sunderland boss said: &#8216;It&#8217;s frustrating with Dennis, obviously, but it&#8217;s great for Nectar. I&#8217;m delighted that him coming in has worked out so well.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/11\/16\/77684347-12737797-image-a-28_1699720533294.jpg\" height=\"361\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Rooney (front row second right) hopes to use the break in a positive way so Birmingham can finally get off the blocks under his charge<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Nectar&#8217;s an amazing young man. I don&#8217;t know whether he came over expecting to get straight into Sunderland&#8217;s team and play, but with Luke O&#8217;Nien and Dan Ballard doing so well, he&#8217;s had to sit on the sidelines.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;He&#8217;s playing with the Under-21s &#8211; we sent him to Southampton the other week and he spent seven hours on a bus travelling down there and then seven hours travelling back. Yet he does it all with a smile on his face.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;He knows he&#8217;s a young footballer who hopefully has a big future at this club, but he also knows where he is in the pecking order at the moment. For him to get chucked in two minutes before kick-off was amazing for him, and I&#8217;m so happy for him because he&#8217;s such a nice kid.&#8217;<\/p>\n<h3>IT&#8217;S ALL KICKING OFF!\u00a0<\/h3>\n<p><span><span>It&#8217;s All Kicking Off is an exciting new podcast from Mail Sport that promises a different take on Premier League football.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span>It is available on MailOnline, Mail+, YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Your browser does not support iframes.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sport\/football\/article-12737797\/Wayne-Rooney-insists-Birmingham-City-IMPROVING-despite-sides-defeat-Sunderland-meaning-taken-just-one-point-possible-15-took-charge.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Wayne Rooney insists Birmingham City are &#8216;IMPROVING&#8217; despite his side&#8217;s defeat to Sunderland meaning they have taken just one point out of a possible 15 <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/sportstoft.com\/soccer\/wayne-rooney-insists-birmingham-are-improving-despite-latest-defeat\/\" title=\"Wayne Rooney insists Birmingham are &amp;apos;IMPROVING&amp;apos; despite latest defeat\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Wayne Rooney insists Birmingham are &amp;apos;IMPROVING&amp;apos; despite latest defeat - Sportstoft<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sportstoft.com\/soccer\/wayne-rooney-insists-birmingham-are-improving-despite-latest-defeat\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wayne Rooney insists Birmingham are &amp;apos;IMPROVING&amp;apos; despite latest defeat - Sportstoft\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Wayne Rooney insists Birmingham City are &#8216;IMPROVING&#8217; 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