Why Wayne Rooney must never become a saint?

Sir Bobby Robson used to say that top footballers 'can never be monks'. Wayne Rooney is proving him right.

Sir Bobby Robson always used to maintain that top footballers "can never be monks". The late Newcastle United and England manager admired Wayne Rooney's feisty streak so much that he once tried to buy him from Everton, yet Robson was also big on manners and detested displays of on-field dissent.

It would have been fascinating to see how Sir Bobby dealt with Rooney's show of petulance at Besiktas but, as a rule, managers find players who care too much infinitely preferable to those who routinely shrug their shoulders and turn the other cheek. "I've taken off far too many players who wanted to be subbed in my time as to get over bothered by someone who gets upset when they are replaced or overreacts when things haven't gone quite their way," explained another former Newcastle manager, Glenn Roeder.

Having struggled as a solitary striker in Istanbul, Rooney was replaced by Michael Owen after 63 minutes and, following the briefest of handshakes, proceeded to throw a boot to the ground, appeared to shout back at some provocative Turkish fans and then covered his eyes with his hands. Roeder regards his antics as a "storm in a teacup". Indeed just as Sir Bobby indulged some of Craig Bellamy's excesses, Roeder sees such episodes as an almost inevitable by-product of Rooney's sulphurous talent and reiterates that passion is always preferable to apathy.

"Truly calm people don't make top professional footballers," he explained. "Yes, they generally learn to control their aggression but, to be a winner, that passion has to be there and sometimes it spills over. At the moment Wayne Rooney is probably the best player in England but you can't hit those heights unless you care deeply about your game.

"There was a time when Wayne Rooney could be unacceptably indisciplined but, thanks to Sir Alex Ferguson's management, he's made marvellous strides in controlling his temper. But you've got to remember he's still a young man who wants to do well and play in every moment of every game. In an era where some players are happy to pick up big money for sitting on the bench, that is not the worst thing in the world.

"Whatever Sir Alex does in response to the Besiktas incident will be the right decision – he knows Wayne better than anyone and, as we saw with Eric Cantona, knows how to get the best out of players who are not angels. But if he did nothing at all in this instance I would not disagree with that decision. It was an instant reaction and sometimes it's best to accept that these things sometimes happen and move on."

Managers are traditionally keen on players "settling down" swiftly, in other words marrying young and starting a family. Ferguson made no secret of his delight when Rooney followed that path. Yet if the England forward's happiness with life alongside his pregnant wife, Coleen, possibly keeps him at home watching TV rather than visiting nightclubs most evenings and, quite possibly, even calms his overall emotional temperature, such factors invariably become irrelevant in the white heat of an elemental arena on the banks of the Bosphorus.

Similarly, while the rage counselling which Ferguson persuaded the England forward to undergo a few years ago can improve his self control, Rooney still retains a personal boiling point probably lower than that of, among others, Frank Lampard. "Rooney's settled private life and possibly the counselling he's said to have had have definitely helped him mature a lot," Roeder said. "But in circumstances like last night they become irrelevant. You can't always turn the other cheek, there are not many leading footballers who are really 'Christian' – and I use the word in inverted commas – when they are not winning games."

Leading coaches have always made special accommodations for rare talents but England's Fabio Capello – a man Rooney may arguably be even more scared of than he is of Ferguson – has always managed by strictly meritocratic principles and is unlikely to cut the United forward much slack should he throw a similar mini-tantrum in South Africa next summer. Capello recently praised Rooney for his new-found poise but, post-Besiktas, may now reflect that this sort of scenario is synonymous with his being required to play alone up front in difficult circumstances. After all, just over three years ago in Germany Rooney was operating as a lone striker in the World Cup quarter-final against Portugal when, with things clearly not going his way, he was sent off for stamping on Ricardo Carvalho.

Rooney has matured significantly since then and, as Roeder argues, that burning inner zeal is so integral to his game it must never be quashed. Nonetheless this, albeit relatively small, regression emphasises that there is clearly a little more work to be done in the self-disciplinary sphere. Sir Bobby would have been truly horrified at the thought of Rooney becoming a monk but he might well have told him: "Manners maketh man."

By Louise Taylor