Expectations placed on young(er) players - did Rooney make it hard for subsequent talent?

[KaiserEFC]

I can absolutely believe that to be honest

Props to my phone for correcting steak to stake. Clearly that’s what I meant.

 

[Bluestar]

No

Rooney was a once in a generation player, but that should have motivated others to try and emulate him. I don't see it as a negative.

I think the question is more from the perspective of the fans expectations on players.

We have unrealistic expectations of our young players. They are not given any time to develop by the crowd.

 

[DualityNSNO]

Props to my phone for correcting steak to stake. Clearly that’s what I meant.

Made it that much more believable to be honest.

 

[Toffeepot]

I'd like to open up discussion on the expectations placed on our younger players.

There's sometimes flurry of excitement in some quarters after a decent initial appearance or two (off the top of my head Barkley, Davies and Nkounkou in recent times).

Frequently there's an awful lot of criticism if they don't hit the ground running Mykolenko, Patterson), or, they show flaws in their game (Davies, Gordon, DCL, Barkley, Rodwell).

Rooney seemed the exception. A once in a generation talent snaffled quickly. Do we think Rooney has made it difficult for subsequent talent to shine? Or have we always been an impatient fanbase?

Yes. He was that good that all young players automatically have a lot to live up to but his exceptional generational talent has also let the academy off the hook. They can point to him and say he came out of the academy, and probably think they do enough to nuture what talent there is, and the rest is up to the players because no doubt he did a lot of it himself. But we lose talent too, because something isn't quite right. Rooney was one of the world's best players at one point so a hard act to follow but other academies keep churning out great players and don't rest on their laurels. We have to do more in this area, much more

 

[twoblue]

Hype towards the academy too mate.

Example - I don't think Rodwell gets the initial game time, and Man City bid if it wasn't for Rooney,

Rodwell didn’t look out of place in the first team. Hard to figure why his career went off the rails.

 

[AndyZ]

Rodwell didn’t look out of place in the first team. Hard to figure why his career went off the rails.

Injuries

 

[BNJ1878]

The fanbase isn't impatient. The fanbase, in general, hypes our players - and especially home-grown players who, very often, just aren't worthy of the nonsense spouted by the fans. If a young player has a few good games, he is built up into "our future" when, in reality, he just had a couple of good games. As players do.

We've been so starved of genuine quality over the last 30 years (where, objectively, only Beardsley, Kanchelskis (for six months), Rooney (for five minutes), and Lukaku were any great shakes) that we put the likes of Tom Davies on a platform if he has a performance while breaking through. Even good players like Richarlison are heralded as world-beaters when they are nothing of the sort. Our effective, quietly excellent players, like Speed, Arteta, Baines, and Cahill have been about as good as it gets for Evertonians over the last 30 years. But they lacked the fantasy that the Evertonian craves. That's a vacuum that the next bright young thing quickly falls into.

I don't need to read anything else in this thread.

This answer covers it all.

Short version "We're generally rubbish so are desperate for somebody to break through, when they're not as great as we first hoped/hyped they're useless"

 

[chippy1722]

I think the question is more from the perspective of the fans expectations on players.

We have unrealistic expectations of our young players. They are not given any time to develop by the crowd.

This is spot on, we are also very extreme on them game by game.
You can go through from the likes of Browning, Galloway Garbutt, Godfrey etc.
One week they were the next big thing and ready for a call up, a couple of weeks later they were flops, and so on.

It’s the same with people expecting the likes of Dobbin, Simms to be playing during a relegation season, yet having no premier league experience at all.
It could do more harm than good and kill then off without the career even starting.

 

[Bluestar]

This is spot on, we are also very extreme on them game by game.
You can go through from the likes of Browning, Galloway Garbutt, Godfrey etc.
One week they were the next big thing and ready for a call up, a couple of weeks later they were flops, and so on.

It’s the same with people expecting the likes of Dobbin, Simms to be playing during a relegation season, yet having no premier league experience at all.
It could do more harm than good and kill then off without the career even starting.

More time and understanding of how young players develop. It’s not linear. They will have bad games and poor periods.

They will need taking out of the team from time to time. It doesn’t mean that they are poor, it’s all part of development.