Wayne Rooney tweak at Birmingham City will affect Drameh and Longelo: Opinion | OneFootball

Highlights

Wayne Rooney is still getting to grips with his Birmingham City side, having joined the club earlier this month at the expense of John Eustace.

The Blues have been having a good season so far this year, with them in the play-off hunt, but there has been some upheaval of late.

Despite the good work John Eustace did in charge, the new Blues owners evidently wanted to head into a new direction, and Rooney is the man now tasked with picking up where he left off.

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Naturally, then, he'll have some of his own ideas about how he wants Birmingham to play, and one recent tweak was already noted in the game against Middlesbrough last time out.

Unfortunately for Rooney, the game ended in a 1-0 defeat to Michael Carrick's men, with fans naturally frustrated about that, and the new manager will be hoping to get some good results on the board given the mood around the change in the dugout amongst supporters.

He'll be hoping, then, that his players can quickly take on his methods, and that can certainly be said for his two full-backs...

Longelo and Drameh tested by 4-3-3

Emmanuel Longelo and Cody Drameh were the two players featuring at full-back on either side of the pitch in the loss to Middlesbrough, and they could be two of the most impacted by a potential change of tactics by Rooney.

Whilst we saw a 4-2-3-1 under John Eustace employed, Rooney played a 4-3-3 against Middlesbrough, and he asked his full-backs to get up the pitch as much as possible and provide width and attacking threat.

That is fine in itself, of course, and both players can absolutely do that role, but it felt as though they were going to need time to adapt to a 4-3-3 and how that impacts their work - perhaps naturally.

Indeed, at times, particularly in the first half against Boro, the two players were caught upfield on more than one occasion as they failed to beat the press from the Teessiders.

Such errors can probably be excused given the short amount of time that Rooney has been in charge but, of course, football does not wait long for players to learn and so both full-backs will be eager to adapt as quickly as possible.

Indeed, it appears if Rooney's system is to work then he will need his full-backs to be well in tune with what he is asking them to do, but clearly there needs to be some honing of that first.