Wayne Rooney recalls fireworks, leaking toilets and xG debate on away days

Wayne Rooney has revealed a string of unusual away-day experiences from his years in English football, recounting disruptions that ranged from fireworks outside hotel venues to leaking toilets above dressing rooms. The anecdotes come from Rooney's appearance on The Wayne Rooney Show, the BBC podcast in which the former England captain reflects on his career.

Rooney said plenty of his away games were disrupted the night before, and he recalled several notable incidents. 'We’ve had fireworks outside the hotel at different places,' he said. 'There was one year, we played New Year’s Day and we stayed in a hotel in Birmingham. Because there were parties downstairs in the function rooms, they put us on the top floor. But they forgot to tell us that there was a firework display on the roof of the hotel. At midnight all the players were woken up by all these fireworks going off right above us.' The Sunderland trip proved particularly eventful: Rooney described a dressing-room flood above the players’ area when the roof leaked. 'I was actually suspended [for the match]. But above the dressing rooms were the toilets and it [the roof] came through when all of the players were in their clothes. You get some tight dressing rooms. There was a load of whatever goes into the toilet, all over the players and the clothes.'

Tottenham and Chelsea were notoriously hot, while Anfield was often icy; Rooney said players would hurry into their kits and stand outside the dressing rooms, wondering if the venues adjusted the temperatures. 'Tottenham and Chelsea were always hot. You’d literally get dressed as quick as you can and then stand outside the dressing room. Anfield was always freezing. I don’t know whether they manipulate the temperature in there.'

Rooney recalled that returning to a former club could be especially painful. When he went back to Goodison Park for an FA Cup tie in February 2005 after joining Manchester United for £27 million in 2004, his father chose not to attend. 'My dad, that was the game he wouldn’t go to. Because obviously he knew I’d be getting a lot of stick and he’d go to all the Everton games and he wouldn’t go to that one, at Goodison.'

Owners are obsessed with high xG, Rooney says, and that focus is changing how teams play. He argued that top clubs want high xG because they believe it correlates with winning, but he warned that it can steer teams away from shooting from the edge of the box. 'Owners want high xG because they think if you’ve got high xG you’ve got more chance to win the game. What they want is the closer you get to the goal, the higher the xG is. So teams are actually not shooting from the edge of the box any more.' The statistics appear to support part of his point: in the current Premier League season, there are about 7.3 shots outside the box per game, compared with 10.5 per game in 2016-17. 'Actually, if you’ve got Frank Lampard for instance, who had lots of shots from the edge of the box, his xG would be really low. But he scored 200-odd goals in his career,' Rooney noted. 'Players get all of the footage, they’re the training sessions in the classrooms of what they’re doing, which is fine, but I think a lot of players now are relying on it [footage and data] too much.'

Rooney was also asked about Hugo Ekitike’s sending off in the Carabao Cup against Southampton. After scoring a late winner, the Liverpool forward celebrated by removing his shirt, earning a second yellow card and a suspension for Liverpool’s Premier League match at Crystal Palace. On BBC Radio 5 Live, Rooney offered more empathy than condemnation: 'I’m sure he’ll be devastated,' he said, adding that the moment highlighted the emotions that can run high in cup ties and in the context of ongoing VAR scrutiny. 'He’s been caught up in the emotion of scoring a goal and he’ll probably regret it,' Rooney said, noting Isak’s arrival could affect selection for upcoming matches. 'He’s giving Isak the chance to come in and try to take his place. So I’m sure he’ll be devastated.'