View from the Blue
Columnist: Lyndon Lloyd

Will the truth ever out?
1 September, 2004

Wayne Rooney: Did he jump or was he pushed?

The phrase, "the truth" has been a prevalant theme this week but the conflicting accounts of just how Wayne Rooney went from God of Goodison to Red Devil in less than a year have muddied the waters of the story of the summer.

If the reaction during the West Brom game to the transfer request that Rooney handed in last Friday is any indication, the overriding sentiment among the fans was one of anger towards the 18 year-old whom most revered as the next Dixie Dean, an Everton legend in the making. The attempts by a faction of the Internet-based Blues to raise awareness of what they believe to be the truth (namely, that Rooney didn't want to leave and was being forced out by a combination of the Board) with a well-intentioned but hastily-arranged flyer that asked fans to register their protest by evacuating the stadium for half time failed to gain any traction with the wider body of supporters.

The fact is that we may never know the real truth but if the weight of evidence points one way it's towards Rooney making a decision to leave his boyhood club, either at the prompting and pressure from his agent, his disaffection with the financial mismanagement at Everton, his deteriorating relationship with David Moyes, or — most likely — all three.

According to a slew of revealing articles in the media this past weekend, Rooney told David Moyes that he had no intention of signing a new contract and that he wanted leave Goodison Park after the European Championships. This coincides with rumours that he had been "tapped up" by Rio Ferdinand while on international duty with England and we at ToffeeWeb have received the same story from a number of insiders at Goodison. Either it is a rigorously-adhered to party line designed to make the Board immune from criticism or it is simply the truth that Wayne decided that after almost a decade with Everton, he had out-grown the Blues.

This scenario is corroborated further by the numerous reports of squad disharmony and disaffection among the players last season towards David Moyes and his rigorous training regimes. Rooney was believed to be one of a number of players who took umbrage at the manager's no-nonsense managerial style so it would come as no surprise if, as is strongly hinted, one of Wayne's chief reasons for wanting to leave.

It becomes even more likely when you consider that Moyes had elected to try the Alex Ferguson approach to management of young players by taking Wayne under his wing and enforce certain boundaries on his impressionable prodigy. Dealing with a teenager who had just been thrust into the limelight, was finding his feet and independence away from home for the first time, all on top of dealing with sudden riches would be difficult enough. But Moyes was not dealing with a mild-mannered, middle-class boy in the Michael Owen or Ryan Giggs mould; Rooney was a shy yet self-assured and sometimes cocky working class lad from Croxteth — a street footballer as one of the newspapers describes him today — whom, as has just come to light, trouble had already found in the form of unabashed visits to prostitutes.

Kenwright, apparently faced with Rooney's decision, used the occasion of Euro 2004, a tournament set alight by Rooney's talent and goals, to talk up his player's value as high as £50m and insist that he wasn't for sale (in reality he was probably daring Chelsea or Real Madrid to make a ridiculous offer), either as a means of driving up the sale price or to signal to Wayne that he and David Moyes really did want him to stay. If the speculation that Trevor Birch's trip to Portugal to hold talks with the player and Paul Stretford was not a meeting to discuss a strategy for getting the right price for Rooney's transfer away from Goodison but a mission to offer him a £50,000-a-week contract, that might support the belief that Kenwright was committed to keeping the striker.

The injury Rooney sustained put paid to any possible move over the summer and it appeared likely that he would be with Everton at least until the January transfer window. The natural assumption, therefore, is that Stretford, fearing that his client would go for a knockdown fee of £12m to £15m in January (with its associated halving of the commission payout to Proactive) scrambled to engineer a move before yesterday's transfer deadline just as Wayne resumed light training, thereby increasing the likelihood that he would pass a medical.

Following this thread goes further down the road of conjecture but it does raise questions over Newcastle's role in initiating the bidding for the country's hottest property. Certainly they seemed genuine in their intent but even allowing for Bobby Robson's sudden dismissal yesterday, the Magpies did drop out of the equation pretty quickly once United had outbid them.

Proactive's role in all of this shouldn't be under-estimated and the timeline of events is documented in my last column, but of particular importance is the effect that the progressive revelations of the less salubrious parts of Rooney's private life have had on the lad himself and increased his desire to leave Merseyside to escape the microscope. There is a story that tells of the time Wayne was spotted in a pub on Prescot Road where some of his family live. He apparently sneaked into a back room under hooded top, followed by a relative who asked him what the matter was. "Can I stay here tonight, my head's done in. I just want somewhere to get away from all this shit," came the reply.

It's hard, therefore, to reconcile the picture that emerges when you piece together the events of the past few months — from the time Rooney is believed to have been first angered by Everton when they postponed contract talks due to financial concerns to the climactic events of the past week — with the belief that Wayne was sold against his will. That's not to say he wasn't, just to assert that the majority of the evidence (such that it is) points in that direction.

It would certainly explain the lethargic displays in Everton Blue for much of last season where he had the look of a man losing interest in his boyhood club compared to his star turn in Portugal. Add to that the fact that on the few occasions he spoke publicly during the long close season, he didn't mention Everton once (while talking about everything from his England joy to his proposal to Coleen on a BP garage forecourt) and you don't get the feeling that his beloved Blues were at the forefront of his mind.

But when he breaks his long silence to issue a brief statement describing his disappointment with Everton's handling of his transfer request and asserting that he knew "the truth," you begin to wonder if this issue does go deeper and that the personnel involved at Goodison are more culpable than they appear in bringing about his departure to Manchester United.

And, if he was set on leaving, how much did his family really know about his true feelings towards the club? Were they misled too by Stretford and not in sufficient contact with their son that they remain convinced to the end that he was being forced out against his will by a club determined to cash in on his worth?

Perhaps we simply can't empathise with Wayne actually wanting to leave. Perhaps we simply can't get to grips with the fact that he felt the time was right to move on. Maybe it was that vest — the one that he no doubt wishes he had never worn — but he was living every Evertonian's dream and, for whatever reason, he has chosen to turn his back on the club he has supported since birth.

The vitriol that has resulted from the transfer is aimed instead at Bill Kenwright who, like Rooney and his vest, probably wishes he had never uttered the words "he is not for sale under any circumstances," particularly if he knew that the lad was already looking to the exit door. Many fans will now hold the £50m evaluation to his head and demand to know why he couldn't have insisted not selling Wayne at all but, as would be the case with any player in the squad, Moyes not keen to retain an unsettled member of his squad. With Chelsea out of the picture and only the two Uniteds interested this week, he ended up settling for the best he could get. Had he held until January, Rooney's value would have dropped like a stone.

That is not to make any apologies for the Chairman, who sails past the transfer deadline with a litany of broken promises behind him and no new faces to show despite pledging not to repeat the fiasco of last year when the club scrambled to sign four players on deadline day. His cast-iron guarantee to Sky Sports' Alan Myers on Thursday that new players would "absolutlely definitely" be arriving before midnight last night rings awfully hollow now and while he probably isn't wholly to blame for Rooney's sale, there is ample rope from which him can be hung at the EGM next week.

Post-Rooney, life at Everton will be only slightly less complicated. The focus switches back now to the issue of ownership.

Lyndon Lloyd

Reader Responses

I just read the article by Lyndon Lloyd which states that the reason Rooney is gone is because he wanted to go. While it may be true that he wanted to go, that's NOT the reason he's gone! He's gone because Everton SOLD him; he still had two years on his contract and Everton could have enforced that. If Everton's financial position were better (e.g. if Gregg's $20 million had been accepted) then they wouldn't have so desperately needed the money and could have refused all offers for this season at least. So let's not forget the root cause. Bad, to diabolical, financial and brand management at Everton.
Chris Langley

If he really had his heart set on leaving, would it have done anyone any good to keep him around against his will, especially given his uneasy relationship with Moyes? Any other player would have been sold if they expressed a desire to leave (Radzinski, anyone?), but Wayne's value seems to have made him a different case. — ToffeeWeb

Your Rooney conspiracy theories and search for hidden meanings are getting out-of-hand. He wanted to leave (as today's statemeny made abundently clear). His agent did the job all agents do these days. Kenwright played a poor hand as well as he could. Why castigate him for spin and lies if it is now clear that he was doing his best to talk up the price on behalf of EFC. Lest you've forgotten, EFC need the money. You are getting way too giddy over this. Move on.
A Blue

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