Rooney Stays

Rooney and Ferguson: together again?

Wayne Rooney finally resolved discussion over his future earlier today by signing a new five-year contract with Manchester United worth a reported £180,000 a week. This doubles his current salary, and will stop Manchester City poaching him in what would have been one of the most astonishing and acrimonious transfers in recent memory.

A few questions remain, though. If, as we have been led to believe in the last few days, Rooney wanted to leave mainly due to his desire to win trophies and his perception that United now lack the ambition to sate his desire for success, what has changed? The club still has enormous debts to service, which no matter what anyone involved in the club at boardroom level might claim surely has to have an impact on how much money Sir Alex Ferguson has available to spend on new players.

Has Rooney received a promise from upon high that United will compete at the top end of the transfer market during the next two windows? I find this highly doubtful. Ferguson has repeatedly insisted that he has money to spend if he wants but that there is “no value” to be found. How about Rafael van der Vaart for £8 million? Wesley Sneijder for just over £13 million? Mesut Ozil for the same price? Even David Villa for £35-40 million doesn’t look so overpriced when you consider that Berbatov cost £30 million. All of these recent transfers prove that there is value to be found; Ferguson just does not have the money to compete.

Besides, the Scot hasn’t exactly been shy in the past about splashing extravagant amounts of cash on players who aren’t in the top bracket. As previously mentioned, Berbatov cost £30 million, and Rio Ferdinand joined for a similar fee. Rooney himself arrived for £18 million when he was only 18 years old, and Ruud van Nistelrooy was signed in the summer of 2001 for £19 million.

And those were the successful transfers. Let us not forget that Juan Sebastián Veron was signed at the same time as van Nistelrooy for a huge fee of £28.1 million. Veron was perhaps unfairly maligned during his time at Old Trafford, but in the end he came nowhere near to living up to his price tag. Ferguson had wasted an enormous sum of money.

The list of players that Ferguson has bought for big money and who have not fully lived up to expectations is long:

• Anderson                               £17.3 million
• Owen Hargreaves               £17 million
• Luis Antonio Valencia      £16 million
• Nani                                       £14.7 million
• Michael Carrick                  £14 million

Valencia and Nani are both talented players, but neither are indispensable. The same applies to Carrick, who has spent a lot of time recently warming the United bench. Anderson has resoundingly failed to live up to his potential, and Hargreaves’ career is continuously threatened by injury. Whilst this is unfortunate, his lack of playing time makes £17 million appear a lot of money in hindsight.

All of this goes to show that Ferguson is not afraid to spend money. His claim that there is “no value” is a completely hollow one; he would spend if he had the money.

At the end of the day, Rooney seems to have stayed at Old Trafford because his wages have been doubled. Fair enough. At 25 years old, he probably only has one more big-money contract left before he passes his peak and his ability begins to decline. No one can blame him for seeking the maximum amount of money possible. By doubling his wages, though, and ensuring that he is the highest-paid player in United’s history, Rooney could actually be damaging his club’s ability to purchase world-class players and compete at the top end of the transfer market. Whilst he is collecting such a big wage packet, it will be harder to offer comparable wages to attract new players. If he really is motivated primarily by ambition, this move is probably not the right one, and is actually quite selfish.

And so it comes down to money in the end, the one thing that seems to motivate above all in English football nowadays. Somebody has played a blinder in this saga; whether it is Rooney’s agent, Paul Stretford, or Ferguson, I am not entirely sure. We will probably never find out.

Perhaps Stretford has carried out one of the greatest contract negotiations in English football history, commandeering the press to put pressure on United and force them to double his star’s wages in order to retain his services. The press were almost unanimously convinced that Rooney was definitely going to leave, feeling that the story would not have been pushed onto their laps unless he genuinely wanted to agitate for a move.

Alternatively, Rooney really did want to leave, and Ferguson has proved his managerial credentials once again by convincing him to stay. The manager may have taken Rooney into a room and given him a stern talking to, sufficient enough to convince him to stay. Or he may have made a different, equally persuasive appeal. The death threats made to Rooney last night may also have played a large part. We will never know for sure.

The one thing that is certain now is that Rooney will have to work hard to win back the support of United’s fans. By seemingly declaring that he wanted to leave for the blue half of Manchester, his image of being completely loyal to United has been all but shattered. He will benefit on a personal level, financially; but if United’s debt mountain continues to grow (which it will), and they can no longer afford world-class players, the trophies will stop coming. Ferguson will surely retire before Rooney’s contract expires, and this will probably spell the end of United’s era of dominance. I do not expect Rooney to stay at Old Trafford once that happens.