26 November 2023 , 01:04
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Wayne Rooney earned his first win as Birmingham City manager after giving his own version of Sir Alex Ferguson's infamous 'hairdryer treatment' to his players at half-time.
Rooney spent nine years under Ferguson at Manchester United and was on the receiving end of plenty of his dressing room rants. And the 38-year-old produced one of his own to inspire a comeback win over Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday.
Birmingham had to come from behind after George Byers gave Wednesday the lead on the stroke of half-time. Juninho Bacuna did score an equaliser minutes later to leave the game finely poised at 1-1 during the break.
And Rooney promptly laid into his players in the interval, inspiring a much improved second-half display that saw Jordan James score the winning goal. Reflecting on what was a much-needed win, Rooney said: "My reaction at half-time wasn't good to the players - that's why my voice has gone.
"We didn't play with the energy I wanted us to play with in the first half and I made the players aware of that, but in the second half we were a lot better. I wasn't very pleased with the first half.
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"I thought Sheffield Wednesday pressed really well without the ball but we have to show more composure on the ball because we were too happy to go back to John Ruddy and allow him to make decisions. I wanted more and I expected more.
"I keep saying this, over the last few weeks the lads have been great and I've seen an improvement week by week. So if that first half was four weeks ago, I could have understood it, but it was unrecognisable to what we've been doing during the international break.
Rooney used his own version of Sir Alex Ferguson's 'hairdryer treatment' to inspire his players to victory (PA)"They picked it up. In this league it's never easy to go a goal down and come back to win the game." The win sees Birmingham move up to 14th in the Championship and Rooney is hoping they can now kick on.
"We have to play in the opposition's half more," he added. "We have the likes of (Siriki) Dembele, (Jay) Stansfield who are good in tight areas and can have an effect on the game. It was exactly what we did for JJ's goal. I feel gradually we will get better at that."
Wednesday, meanwhile, remain bottom of the league having picked up just the one win so far this season. "We deserved more," insisted manager Danny Rohl after the game. "There has just been the one game against Rotherham where we took the points but today we showed nearly what we can do in this league."