Wayne Rooney Statement Confirmed Worst Fears for Manchester United Fans

Last week was not a good week for Manchester United. Wayne Rooney’s highly public contract dispute might have eventually been resolved but the highly damaging statement the player issued can never be retracted.

Confidence at Old Trafford has not been high of late, and the team appears to still be reeling from the enforced departures of both Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez last year. Alex Ferguson has a proven track record of allowing key players to move on in their prime in order to replenish and revitalize his team. Paul Ince, Jaap Stam, David Beckham, Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Roy Keane have all been unceremoniously shown the door. On every occasion, Ferguson’s judgement has ultimately been vindicated.

The Manchester United manager could point to Rooney’s exceptional form last season and claim that the sale of Tevez and Ronaldo had given the striker a new lease of life. There is merit in this argument, but the reality is that his team came up short in the only two competitions that really matter, the Premier League and the Champion’s League.

Wayne Rooney scored 34 goals last season, comfortably the most prolific season of his career. However, his erstwhile strike partners were not exactly profligate—Tevez managed 29 for local rivals Manchester City while Ronaldo scored 33 for Real Madrid.

The departure of these two players allowed Alex Ferguson to effectively harness the undeniable talent of his mercurial striker. However, while Rooney might have benefitted from becoming the focal point of the Manchester United attack, the team as a whole has clearly suffered. Antonio Valencia had a fine first season, but he is no Ronaldo, and seven goals represented a fairly modest return by the standards set by the Portuguese wing wizard. Michael Owen, who was brought in as a cut price replacement for the hugely popular Tevez, has failed to rediscover his goal-scoring form.

The reasons behind the sale of Ronaldo and the decision not to retain Tevez became abundantly clear when Manchester United released their annual accounts recently. Manchester United made an £84 million loss last year, despite receiving £80 million from Real Madrid for Ronaldo. Tevez, who was only ever on loan at old Trafford, reportedly cost Manchester City £47 million.

With Manchester United hemorrhaging money in interest payments, there is simply no way they could have afforded to either sign Tevez permanently or reject Real Madrid’s world record bid for Ronaldo. For once, Ferguson was not in control, he simply had no choice but to allow both players to leave. The precarious financial position which the Glazer’s leveraged buyout has left the club in means that for the first time in his Manchester United career, Ferguson is being forced to sell his best players in order to make ends meet.

Arsenal are a young team who continue to improve, Manchester City are close to becoming the finished article, and Chelsea are showing no sign of relinquishing their stranglehold on English football. The future for Manchester United looks a little bleaker.

With Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Gary Neville and Edwin Van der Sar all on the verge of retirement and limited funds to find replacements, it is difficult to see where the next treble winning team is going to come from.

Ferguson is being asked to pull the proverbial rabbit from the hat by recruiting world class players with a less than world class budget. He might well have found a gem in Mexican striker Javier Hernandez who is finding his feet in the absence of the injured Rooney. The jury is still very much out on Gabriel Obertan, Chris Smalling and Bebe while injury prone Owen has not been a success.

The pessimists point of view is that Manchester United are rapidly losing ground on their rivals and, burdened by debt, are no longer in a position to compete financially with the top teams in Europe. Results this season have been mediocre at best and the team has repeatedly surrendered leads and thrown away points against inferior opposition.

The more optimistic of Manchester United fans could argue that a second place finish in last season’s Premier League does not exactly constitute a crisis. Had Rafael not been foolishly sent off in the second leg of the Champion’s League quarter final the club would presumably have progressed even further in that competition, and Ferguson also threw in a Worthington Cup win at Wembley just for good measure. This season the team are only five points off the summit of the Premier League and are top of a tough looking Champion’s League group.

Judging from the following statement Rooney, supposedly the team’s talisman, falls firmly into the former camp,

“I met with David Gill last week and he did not give me any of the assurances I was seeking about the future squad. I then told him that I would not be signing a new contract. My agent and I have had a number of meetings with the club about a new contract. During those meetings in August I asked for assurances about the continued ability of the club to attract the top players in the world. For me it's all about winning trophies—as the club has always done under Sir Alex. Because of that I think the questions I was asking were justified,” he said.

Rooney was putting a voice to the fears of many fans in the most public way possible. He clearly believes that Manchester United are no longer the force they once were and is concerned that the club lacks the transfer funds to build a squad capable of adding to his already impressive collection of silverware.

A five-year contract might be signed, sealed and delivered, but Rooney’s concerns cannot have evaporated overnight. Wins over Stoke City and Wolverhampton Wanderers will have done a little to restore confidence in the aftermath of last week’s off field debacle, but both victories required last-gasp goals after lackluster performances.

Rooney will be absent from this Saturday’s Premier League match with Tottenham Hotspur due to an ongoing ankle injury, but his comments will linger none the less and Manchester United will be desperate to dispel them with a resounding win.