Fans Comment
Johnny Todd

Once a Blue, Always a Blue… eh, Wayne?
5 July 2004

Once a Blue...

Now there have been a lot of hysterical posts on various Everton message boards over the last couple of weeks regarding the Wayne Rooney saga.  There have also been some good, logical and analytical posts and articles regarding the situation, a lot of which have revolved around the sinister role of ProActive and Paul Stretford.

Whilst I agree with most that Stretford and ProActive appear to want to see Rooney out of Everton to either Man United or Chelsea, and whilst you can micro analyse which one his agents would prefer him to go to, I believe that they would settle for anywhere more fashionable than Everton.

I also agree that the media have fuelled the situation and have probably been fed many of the lines that they have trotted out (ie, Rooney has to move to a bigger club for him to develop, etc, etc) by his agents.  There are also some dubious conflicts of interest regarding so called pundits holding shares in ProActive.

Nevertheless, no matter who else wants to see Rooney move, or whoever stands to benefit from such a move, or no matter how many newspapers it sells, to paraphrase the famous political analogy ‘The buck stops with Rooney’.

At any point in the last two weeks Rooney could have come out publicly and committed himself to Everton Football Club, a la Stephen Gerrard (I’ve never had any time for this hateful player, but he went up inestimably in my opinion with his swift action).  However, the silence from Rooney is deafening.

Now before, the apologists clamour that Rooney (and his agents) shouldn’t expose their hand too early on in contract negotiations, I simply don’t accept this as an argument.  The Club have publicly stated that Rooney will be offered the biggest contract in the Club’s history (or thereabouts).  What more does Rooney want?  He already earns £13,000 a week — more than a lot of Everton fans earn in a year.  The Club are set to offer him somewhere in the region of £20,000 a week, rising to around £40,000 a week.  That’s anywhere between £1M and £2M a year for the next five years, making Rooney a multi-millionaire.

Argh, but I hear some cry, what about that career ending injury that’s just around the corner?  Well, according to the press, Rooney is already a multi-millionaire through his current contract and various sponsorship deals.  For instance, he has reputedly signed a £10M deal with Nike over the next decade.  Furthermore, plenty of professional football players have never fully recovered from career-ending injuries and still manage to collect on their contracts despite their apparent inability to play more than a handful of games a season.  Furthermore, when was the last time anyone heard of a footballer’s career being cut so short that they were left financially insecure?  Jim Beglin’s was the last career-ending injury I can remember.

So, let’s park the money question for a moment or indeed the ‘negotiating tactic’ argument.  The facts are this, the Club is set to offer Rooney a very handsome renumeration package for the next five years (one which the vast majority of Everton fans, the CEO of Tesco excepted, will never see in our lifetimes) and one which, with other endorsements and sponsorship deals will see him financially secure for the rest of his life.

In light of this and his previously self-professed love of Everton Football Club, why hasn’t Rooney come out and at least said that he will commit himself to the Club for the foreseeable future (he doesn’t even have to put a timescale on it) and that he and his agents will be sitting down to negotiate the deal?  That’s all he has to say and all this speculation would die a death, there and then.

Soooo… Why hasn’t he?

The answer is I don’t know; none of us do, probably not even David Moyes or Bill Kenwright.  Only Rooney himself, his family, agents and probably a tight-knit circle of friends know the answer.

What did strike me as odd, however, and moved me to write this piece, was the ‘doublepage spread’ on Rooney in the News of The World on Sunday.  Did anyone else notice the complete lack of a mention of Everton from him in that article?  The Club was mentioned several times but only in an oblique fashion through the narrative and not once in a direct quote from Wayne.  Here are a few snippets:

From the Journalist…

“Their romance had started in the school summer holidays of 2002 when Wayne had just left the De La Salle High School for boys and was just weeks away from making his Everton debut against Spurs.  Both were 16.”

“Wayne, already a prodigy with Everton youth teams, was totally smitten.”

“In May last year, with the money he was making from Everton where he had famously scored against Arsenal five days before his 17th birthday, Wayne bought his parents a £470,000 house in nearby West Derby.”

“The luxury home, in the Freshfield area of Formby, South Lancs, is a 20-minute drive from Croxteth, where Coleen's family still live, and about a half an hour by car from the Everton ground”.

Quotes attributed to Rooney…

"When I got my first big pay cheque [from who?], I saved up and bought Coleen an expensive ring, a diamond set in white gold," he added.

"And I bought my dad a Galaxy car and was able to give my mum and brothers some money.  It was fantastic to be able to do that."

"Asking Coleen to marry me was far worse than walking out for England”.

"In the dining room there's a huge picture of me scoring my first ever goal for England, it's my most treasured possession in the house.  All the players and staff for England have signed it."

The last quote was the final nail in coffin for me.  I might be a self-obsessed blue but I would have thought (or at least hoped), what with Wayne being the massive Evertonian that he is, that scoring THAT goal against Arsenal — his first at Goodison — would have been his proudest moment, or simply donning that Royal Blue Jersey and running out in front of 40,000 adoring fans to that most stirring of tunes — Z Cars (a dream sequence we have all… well…dreamt of).

Now some people do hold playing for their Country in higher regard than their Club, and maybe this is the case for Wayne, but from what we have been led to believe about Rooney and his family and given the fact that I don’t know any Evertonian (correct me if I am wrong) who would rather play for England than Everton, I found this quote more than slightly disturbing.

I may be doing the lad an injustice.  Maybe he eulogised about his love for Everton Football Club, maybe he waxed lyrical about his boyhood heroes and his desire to emulate past Everton legends such as Dixie Dean, Alex Young, Harvey, Kendall and Ball.  Or maybe he stated his longing to wear the famous number nine shirt and Capitan a resurgent Everton side in the years to come.   Maybe he did all this and more and maybe the axis of evil – his agents and the press – colluded to edit it all out... maybe!

This brings me back to my original point: Rooney could stop all this speculation now, he could stop people like me and the other thousands of Evertonian who are fed up to the back teeth with this saga, by making a simple statement about his intentions.

If he does commit to Everton and the Club chooses to sell him then the fury of the fans will, rightly or wrongly (whatever your view about the downside or upside of selling him), be directed at the Club and Board.  I think I’ll be able to cope with the Club selling him for a massive transfer fee.  I can tell myself that that’s the way football has always been.  How many times in our heyday as the ‘Mersey Millionaires’ must we have shattered the dreams of the fans from smaller clubs with our inflated bids for players?

However, if, after less than two full seasons, a lad from Liverpool — who we are led to believe has lived and breathed Everton all his life, whose entire family are Everton mad — can turn his back on the Club that he has been with since the age of nine for what?  More money, Champions League football, to develop, or because he doesn’t like the manager… then something is seriously rotten with the game.

I won’t go so far as some have and state that it will signal the end of the beautiful game; it won’t and it certainly won’t signal the end of Everton Football Club.  We’ll still be here, the 40,000 (or slightly less next year) who regularly turned up at Goodison Park before Wayne Rooney was even born and will continue to turn up long after he departs.

What will be certain is that Wayne Rooney will not be an Everton legend.  I say this with no malice but as a simple statement of fact.  Wayne Rooney will not have worn the Number 9 shirt (not a pre-requisite for legend status but definitely a helping hand); he will not have Captained the Club; he will not have scored in a derby match (he won’t even have figured in a win over Liverpool); he will not have won any honours with the Club (a long shot I know).

No matter what Wayne Rooney achieves with another football club or even with England (including winning a World Cup), to Evertonians he will only ever have been potential, a flash in the pan, ranking alongside Francis Jeffers, Michael Branch and Danny Cadamarteri.  We will not talk about him with glassy eyes and a distant gaze as we do of the 80s heroes of Sharp, Grey and Reid; or the 70s stalwarts of King and Latchford; or the 60s icons, Harvey, Kendall and Ball, Alex Young or Brian Labone; or even of players only my 80-year-old grandfather saw — Dixie Dean and Tommy Lawton.

Once a Blue Always a Blue...what’s it be…eh Wayne?

Johnny Todd

Reader Responses

Paranoia. I've read the [News of the World] article, and taken in the context it was written in, it appears totally reasonable. It's clearly written as a profile of "Wayne Rooney: The Man" as opposed to "Wayne Rooney: The Footballer". I can't really fault Wayne for not going on and on about Everton when the article is clearly about his relationship with his girlfriend, and how they are dealing with mega-wonga and mega-fame. The constant speculation by Everton fans on Wayne staying/going will only serve to make a large proportion of those fans increasingly distressed and nervous. Oh, and encourage Fleet Street to print yet another "gone to Chelsea/ ManUre/ Real Madrid/ Accrington Stanley" story without any basis in fact.

The press in England are a disgrace, easily the worlds worst. Wasn't it only a few months ago that Sven was DEFINITELY the new Chelsea boss? Wasn't it only a few weeks ago that David Beckham had DEFINITELY signed for Chelsea? And wasn't it only a few DAYS ago that Steven Gerrard had DEFINITELY signed for Chelsea?

Fans speculating on press misinformation and outright lying bullshit is plain stupid. We'd all be better served crossing our fingers, and hoping that Bill Kenwright, David Moyes and Wayne Rooney come up with a solution that pleases all of us. {Except the press, obviously}.

It just seems to me that Everton fans - victims of the media for so very long - should be the very LAST people helping fuel this insane media speculation. We're on Waynes side right?

I, for one, don't believe for a second that Wayne Rooney will be going anywhere. But speculating one way or the other isn't going to make a damn bit of difference and it's about time us Everton fans recognised that. Our ability to influence events, unfortunately, is totally negligible. It's out of our hands.
David C

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