“If the average, cheese-brained, money-obsessed English footballer paid as much attention to becoming a better player as to the size of their bank balance, Ipod headphones and the press attaché’s tits then a heck of a lot more would have headed to the Spanish league in recent years than the brave few that have manfully taken the plunge in la Primera.” (Football 365)

Why isn’t Wayne Rooney the player we thought he’d become?
“Wayne Rooney is a force of nature: a natural, swaggering, street footballer who used to play the game with the reckless abandon of the best player in the playground and who made the dimensions of the pitch seem to shrink whenever he received the ball. He retains all of these qualities, despite his current loss of form, but he only really got the credit his talent deserved in England when he started scoring goals.” (Football Further)

Wayne Rooney’s arch adviser heads for another big pay day
“Wayne Rooney plays for England in a summer tournament, then returns to gory tabloid stories exposing his alleged weakness for prostitutes. Further stories soon follow, that he has fallen out with his Scottish disciplinarian manager and wants a transfer. The manager denies any falling out, but complains that, despite all his club have done for the ‘boy’, Rooney’s ‘advisers’ say he wants a move.” (Guardian)

Alex Ferguson is not always right
“It seems to be a truth universally acknowledged that, when in want of a new club, a footballer rarely gets the better of Alex Ferguson. The Manchester United manager, we are told, is the right man to send players on their way. He knows when to protect his players, when to discipline them and when to dispense with them. When a player looks set to leave Old Trafford we are fed the usual line, that Ferguson sells players when it suits him but not when it suits them. Well, Wayne Rooney might just be proving that theory wrong.” (WSC)