Fireworks and leaking toilets - Rooney on Man Utd away days

Chelsea's away dressing room was too hot. Liverpool's was too cold. Sunderland's once proved a nasty surprise for Manchester United's players from some leaking toilets on the floor above.

Those are some of the stories Wayne Rooney has revealed when remembering some of his oddest away trips on his latest BBC podcast.

Speaking on The Wayne Rooney Show, the former England captain added that plenty of his away games throughout his career have been disrupted the night before.

"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."

As for the flooded dressing room in Sunderland, Rooney said: "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.

"I think there was a load of whatever goes into the toilet, all over the players and the clothes.

"You get some tight dressing rooms. 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 added that a return to a former club could often provide the most painful away trip. When the striker went back to Goodison Park for the first time after joining Manchester United - for an FA Cup tie in February 2005 - his father refused to watch.

"Yeah, was horrible. Obviously it's a ground I've been going to since I was a kid, a baby," said the 39-year-old, who joined United as a teenager from Everton for £27m in 2004.

"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."

Rooney also suggested on the podcast that the Premier League is being affected by club owners' obsession with expected goals (xG).

He believes that because of that obsession, top-flight players are taking fewer long-range shots.

"Owners want high xG because they think if you've got high xG you've got more chance to win the game," he said.

"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 stats back up Rooney's point. In the Premier League so far this season, there have been 7.3 shots outside the box per game, whereas nine seasons ago, in the 2016-17 campaign, the average was 10.5.

"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-and-odd goals in his career," added Rooney.

"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 on Tuesday.

After scoring a late winner, the Liverpool forward celebrated by removing his shirt, which led to him getting a second yellow card, and a suspension for Liverpool's Premier League match at Crystal Palace on Saturday.

On BBC Radio 5 Live, former Blackburn striker Chris Sutton called Ekitike's celebration "sheer stupidity", but Rooney was far more forgiving.

"He's been caught up in the emotion of scoring a goal and he'll probably regret it," said Rooney.

"I'm not defending it because it is silly, but I'm saying what we've seen over recent years with VAR and players scoring goals and waiting to celebrate and stuff, I think it's actually refreshing to see someone celebrating a goal.

"He's doing really well and it's probably a shootout for him and [fellow new signing] Alexander Isak to start [against Palace].

"He's giving Isak the chance to come in and try and take his place. So I'm sure he'll be devastated."