Wayne Rooney gets off to worst possible start at Plymouth as comical own goal leads to thumping Sheffield Wednesday loss

WAYNE ROONEY got off to the worst possible start as Plymouth boss – summed up with a comical own goal.

The Manchester United legend took over at Argyle after being sacked by Birmingham in January.

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Rooney needed to win fans over after his hiring was slammed by some supporters.

But now he has even more work to do after falling to a 4-0 drubbing in his opening Championship game of the season at Sheffield Wednesday.

Striker Jamal Lowe opened the scoring on 35 minutes before things got worse after the break.

On 52 minutes, Lowe headed the ball into Plymouth defender Brendan Galloway’s face and it bounces into the net.

The laughable own goal about summed up Rooney’s opening game with Josh Windass and Michael Smith adding to the rout.

Rooney said after the game: “The scoreline was deserved.

“From my point of view the really disappointing thing was the basics of the game, winning duels and stopping crosses.

“We conceded four goals from four crosses. The basics of the game were not there.

“The really disappointing thing for me is as a team we didn’t play with the confidence we’ve shown in the last few weeks.

“We didn’t take the ball well enough or handle the crowd early enough.

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“We allowed them to get a foothold in the game, and we let it run out and conceded two more goals.

“I’m disappointed and angry, because that’s not the performance I wanted to see. We spoke about their threats from crosses.

“We spoke about Barry Bannan and we let him run the game and didn’t get close enough to him. That wasn’t acceptable.

“The players have to earn the right to play. You can lose football games, that happens, but there’s a way you want to see your players run, work and tackle.

“We’ve had a lot of fans come a long way, and the perfomance we’ve given wasn’t good enough.

“We have to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

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