This isn't another article about Wayne Rooney and his s-excapades. At least it shouldn’t be. Instead I hope it to be the full stop on all this hysteria. Many trials have befallen the young Liverpudlian turned Mancunian lately, there has been revelations about his private life, speculation about his ‘waning’ ability and the back of a failed World Cup to add to the bloke’s hangover. The question you should be asking is, ‘does it really matter?’
The immediate answer is, well, yes. But is that right? They always say that these players are paid millions and the pressure comes as part of the job, and that is true of any job really, the difference is, if a surgeon plays away from home (excuse the pun) he won’t lose his sponsorships and get put on the medicine bench.
Rooney is a role model I hear you screaming at me, and kids do look up to him, but they do to anyone famous. You wouldn’t expect a rock star or actor to live a clean life of soberness, so why do we expect so much from our footballers? Why aren’t they aloud to make mistakes like other humans? Why are we so condemning of them? I’m no Mormon. I’m not suggesting that adulteration be scrapped from the Ten Commandments, but we should give dear Wayne a break and let him get back on the horse instead of kicking a lad when he’s down.
Part of this is to do with Fergy leaving Wayne off of the pitch against Everton. Was it the right choice? Maybe Wayne’s head might not have been in the game or the atmosphere might have been too much, none of that really outweighs his natural ability though and it shouldn’t have stopped him from playing.
Wayne will bounce back. No one should even be talking about this anymore. He was dumb, it isn’t that important- now let’s talk football.
The Manu-Everton game itself was enthralling. As he so often does, Tim Cahill leapt like an honorary salmon to put a stoppage time goal past Van Der Sar and then to assist Arteta for another and gain a point for his club. Fergy will have had a few words to say to his squad after they leaked away a lead like that, especially since he coined the phrase ‘squeaky bum time.’ Neither his squad, nor his talismanic striker are proving to be that squeaky at the moment, but if I were a Manu fan I would be more worried about the former than the latter. With other tabloid conjecture suggesting Sir Alex is getting past it by bringing in un-seen, un-known youth talent Bebe, could a dark dusk be settling over Old Trafford?
Chelsea are still looking in top form and are flying high, the youngsters at Arsenal are coming along nicely and playing more and more like their Catalonian surrogate-cousins. Meanwhile Man City might just find the right adhesive to glue all of their superstars together and make a should-be unstoppable football monster. These should be the actual concerns of the red devils and their legions of devout fans, now can we put this whole Rooney cheating story to bed? (Excuse that pun as well please, sorry!)