Rooney Reaction...before he signed the 5 year deal!

Note: And this is a severely important note...I've been working on this all morning and was finishing literally as I got a text come through telling me the c*nt has only gone and signed a new deal! It's taken me ages to perfect, so I wasn't just gonna scrap it was I!? So I'm so sorry for the lateness, complete lack of relevance and no doubt complete hypocracy spewing from my emotional heart...but it is genuinly from the heart and how I fee. So here it is...

Ok, I think its time.

I’ve been putting this off for as long as I can: at first because of sheer disbelief, but then to allow the news to blossom and transpire from rumour into reality. It seems as though that is exactly what has happened. But my disbelief is still intact.

When your best player is sold, it’s gutting. When your best player wants to be sold, it’s even worse. But when your best player publicly exclaims his discontent towards the way the club is run and their ambitions for the future, consequently stating he doesn’t want to play for that sort of club anymore, words cannot describe the shock and embarrassment.

By telling the United fans and footballing world that we can’t sufficiently attract the players, or strive for success, anymore is to reveal that Manchester United are over. Arrogant haters from West London and the wastelands of Manchester claim the United era is over. But when your own player says it – telling the world that United are no more the force they once were – is beyond anything anyone ever expected from him.

We loved Rooney, as we loved Ince, Stam, Beckham, Van Nistelrooy and Ronaldo. All those players disappointedly left United under a haze of controversy and confusion. But not one of them has acted as petulantly as Rooney. Still, those big name departures are the reason that the term ‘no one player is bigger than United’ is a synonymous Sir Alex Ferguson ethos. Because what Sir Alex manages to do each time is simple and above all effective: to prove the doubters wrong and move on.

Ince felt it was time, so we took the £7.5million from Inter and started rebuilding immediately. Stam was a mistake, but in cam Rio and we rebuilt immediately. Beckham and Van Nistelrooy upset Sir Alex and had to go, but we rebuilt immediately. But then we come to Ronaldo.

There was never any stopping his dream move to Real…but where was the rebuild? £80million received, but only £17million spent that summer: on an unproven French teenager, a winger from Wigan and an injury prone, 29 year old former England legend. Ferguson has argued about the lack of value in the market, but why has that ‘lack of value’ inhibited his desire to push this team forward? In other words: where is the progress in this side? A side now apparently content on selling its best players to finish second, rather than sign new, exciting ones and prove that we didn’t need that big name in the first place. As no one is bigger than United.

The point is, with the resources available at the time we should have been able to sufficiently replace the best player in the world. So sufficiently, that with an £80million injection we would have easily won the title again as well as appeared in our third Champions League final in a row. But it didn’t happen. Now Rooney will go, and the best case scenario is we receive the full £45/50million that he is worth…but where will the money go this time? What lies are we going to be fed as to why ‘we don’t need to spend the money’ rather than the truth that ‘we can’t spend the money’.

Rooney’s expected departure will be hard to take. The immediate void he’ll leave on the pitch – the presence, power and determination that is now reserved for the club that can 'match his ambitions' – will be missed. And as the third of our 'Holy Trinity markII' isolates himself from the faithful, the psychological impact his statement and revelations will have on the club I fear will shock us into an irreversible situation that we have experienced before and have struggled to get back from.

The insult he has thrown in the way of his current employers, the fans that called him 'the white Pele', and the mentor he called 'a genius' is pathetic. And regardless of how this situation ends (with only one possible outcome, you feel), he has surely done too much to go back on his words. He has burnt his bridges at this proud club and deserves the 'money = success' mantra that all those modern footballing 'giants' live by. The very ones that are fittingly linked to Rooney.



He could have been a legend. He could’ve been the greatest striker to ever wear the United shirt. Instead he leaves, like the others before him, under a haze of controversy and confusion.



He is yet another player who has fought against the United/Sir Alex system and left. However unlike the others, you feel that maybe this player is right. Maybe we are not that same force any longer. And maybe Rooney and the worlds best are better off away from United; at clubs that truly posess the money, resources and ambition to deal with them.



Only time will tell whether this battle ends in the same way as all the others - with players, too big for their own boots, wanting far more than they actually deserve - or whether the times have finally moved ahead of this innovative manager and complaicence overpowers his club; once associated with eternal dominance.

As for that irreversible situation I spoke about earlier…does this look familiar? :

 

Law – left in 1973

Charlton – in 1973

Best – in 1974

…no league title for 19 years.

 

Tevez – left in 2009

Ronaldo – in 2009

Rooney – ...2011?

 

......…so what now?