Championship news: Wayne Rooney criticises Birmingham City players ahead of Sunderland clash

Wayne Rooney has criticised a number of his players after Birmingham City gave away a 2-0 lead to draw 2-2 with Ipswich Town in the Championship on Saturday.

Birmingham are without a win in their first four games of Rooney's tenure with the Blues set to face Sunderland next at the Stadium of Light next weekend.

Birmingham squandered their two-goal lead against Ipswich after a raft of substitutions by Rooney.

“The one thing I can fault is some of the lads who came on off the bench didn’t do enough. If you’re not in the starting XI – and I make this point all the time – you need to be ready to come on," Rooney said in the post-match press conference.

"The lads worked extremely hard to put us in the position we were in and when you come off the bench you need to do better than a few of us done. That’s something we need to look at and improve on.

“The quality on the ball, I think we all have to improve. That has to get better throughout the team. A big focus this week has been without the ball and how we play really front-footed and make it difficult for Ipswich.

"But when you make changes and you bring players into the game, they have to pick it up – especially when Ipswich were starting to get a bit of control – and give us that energy to continue doing what we were doing. I just felt there were a couple of players who didn’t really do that for us,” Rooney continued.