Plymouth assistant defends Wayne Rooney’s passion after sending off

Posted Sunday, October 06, 2024 by PA

Plymouth assistant head coach Pete Shuttleworth defended Wayne Rooney’s passion after the former England striker was sent off in the dramatic 2-1 win over Blackburn.

Rooney was incensed by Blackburn’s equaliser four minutes from time and remonstrated with the fourth official after Joe Rankin-Costello had headed home.

Rooney felt there was a foul in the build-up and was sent to the stands by referee James Linington following a heated exchange – but his mood was improved when Morgan Whittaker headed home a late Argyle winner in the seventh and final minute of stoppage time.

Plymouth had earlier swept into a 15th-minute lead against the run of play through on-loan Burnley striker Michael Obafemi.

Shuttleworth said: “We were disappointed with their goal, I think that was evident and we could have easily gone under at that point. We didn’t we went down the other end and had a couple of chances and Morgan pops up with a header in the middle of the goal which was fantastic.

“To win three on the bounce here in front of these fans is really pleasing and we leave the ground a really happy group tonight.

“Wayne’s still passionate. He has got that passion. We were disappointed there wasn’t a foul given for the foul on Ryan Hardie leading up to the goal.

“To win three games against three good teams – Sunderland who were top, Luton just down from the Premier League and Blackburn who were unbeaten until this week – is great, especially going into the international break.

“I thought it was excellent from start to finish.

“To win a game like that is really exciting and the fans go home really pleased.

“I thought we were outstanding and fully deserved to win.

“The only slight disappointment is that we didn’t finish the game off earlier because we had enough chances to be comfortable going into injury time and when you don’t do that you always allow a team to stay in the game a little bit and that’s exactly what happened.

“The pleasing thing after that (Blackburn levelling) was our mentality to go and win the game.”

Rovers head coach John Eustace was disappointed his side did not go on to win the game themselves after their late equaliser.

He said: “I thought for the first hour we stayed in the game. The plan was to always open it up in the last half an hour with the positive changes. We didn’t want to concede the goal in the manner we did.

“The lads stuck to the task and when we brought the subs on, we thought there was only one team that was going to go on and win the game.

“We scored a good equaliser and had some good moments after that, so to concede in the manner we did is really disappointing and something we have to work on.

“In the first half we won the ball back in the opposition half but we weren’t good enough in the final third and our decision making wasn’t good enough. We knew we had a good bench and the game opened up when the subs came on.

“It is really disappointing, we got ourselves back into the game and it looked like we would go on and win it. It was disappointing we didn’t see the game through.

“We had a game plan, but we didn’t look after the ball well enough.”