Rooney fall out two years ago was the beginning of the end

Posted Thursday, March 07, 2013 by The Sun

Rooney fall out two years ago was the beginning of the end
EYEING THE EXIT ... Rooney was benched for Utd's crucial tie against Madrid

AT 5.30pm on Tuesday, Wayne Rooney realised his days at Old Trafford were numbered.

Stunned and alone with his thoughts, he had just been told he would not be starting in Manchester United’s biggest game of the season.

Instead he would join the rest of the world watching.

Loyal wife Coleen was stunned and tweeted: “Can’t believe @WayneRooney isn’t starting tonight!!!”

The posting was quickly removed as she claimed a lack of football knowledge for her outburst.

When he managed a late cameo, Rooney hooked a great chance over the bar from eight yards out as his manager turned away in despair.

The same despair Alex Ferguson has felt on too many occasions about a player who had the world at his feet but has too often lost control of it.

The relationship between manager and player has never been the same since Rooney tried to quit Old Trafford and came very close to joining Manchester City.

His questioning of the club’s ambition in a public statement back in October 2010 left Ferguson stunned. He would not forget.

Ferguson talked that situation round because he simply could not afford to lose someone who was then one of the world’s best players to a city rival growing in threatening stature.

But the damage had been done and the crack in the relationship has gone on to splinter still further — to the point where the pair were barely speaking at the start of the season.

Rooney has kept pushing Ferguson too far.

Let us take last season for example.

Following a 5-0 win over Wigan on Boxing Day, Ferguson told his players to rest and not be seen out.

Rooney went out — and stayed out — for quite some time, to the point that the following day he was not in the right state to train properly.

A fine of a week’s wages of £250,000 followed and he was axed for the next game at home to strugglers Blackburn on New Year’s Eve.

United lost 3-2 in the biggest shock in Prem history. It cost them dearly as they eventually surrendered the title on the last day on goal difference.

A fit Rooney and surely they would not have lost to a club struggling to stay afloat in the top flight.

Ferguson would not forget.

Fast forward to this season and the boss was clearly unhappy with the player’s fitness levels on his return from a summer break and axed him after an awful display in the opening game of the season, which United lost at Everton.

Then throw in other elements including salacious headlines about a dalliance with a prostitute, tales of him drinking, smoking and pictures of him urinating in public.

There has been concern at boardroom level about all this for some time, too. This is a player United shattered their wage structure for, to keep at a cost of £250,000 a week.

Rooney, 27, has two years left on his current deal and there is no way United will offer him a new one on the sort of money he now enjoys.

Quite the opposite — United want to cut and run and will accept £25million for him.

Rooney believes he could be coming to his peak. Ferguson believes that peak has gone.

Why else leave him out on the biggest night at Old Trafford since their Champions League semi-final against Barcelona five years ago?

Ferguson tried to explain away the player’s omission by saying he needs more games.

It did not make sense.

He had just played 90 minutes against Norwich, setting up two Shinji Kagawa goals and scoring a third.

In the Bernabeu he had done a job asked of him to help keep Real at bay.Recently he had missed three games, apparently with sinusitis, but it was only three games.

There always seems to be something with Rooney — a cut, a pull, a metatarsal, fitness levels, now throw in sinusitis.

In contrast, Cristiano Ronaldo never even sneezes.

Ferguson and Rooney barely spoke in pre-season after he returned and they are hardly regular dinner guests at each other’s houses now.

Ferguson knows when he has had the best out of a player.

It was why David Beckham, Roy Keane, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Jaap Stam were unceremoniously dumped. Like Rooney, all had fallen out with the boss.

The truth is Rooney’s touch is simply not what it was, a yard of pace has gone, frustration too often etches the features of someone who used to get so much joy from playing football.

In Tuesday night’s match programme Rooney said: “These are special nights and ones you want to enjoy.”

As he returned to the Old Trafford dressing room, there was only sadness at his bit-part in a heartbreaking tale of what might have been.

The final chapter of his own United career is being written now and there will be no happy ending to this one.