AS HE held court at Manchester United’s training ground yesterday lunchtime, Sir Alex Ferguson did not sound like a man who expected to miss out on signing Wayne Rooney. There have been renewed indications over the past 24 hours that the Everton forward might prefer to reject the overtures from Old Trafford and join Newcastle United, as Alan Shearer did eight years ago, but Ferguson appears confident of securing a £25 million deal before the transfer window closes on Tuesday.
Ferguson started cautiously — “we’re talking about something that might not happen, so there’s nothing else we can say” — but, simply by going into the timetable of any move, he indicated his confidence that the deal would be completed in time. “The deadline is an issue but it’s not insurmountable,” he said. “Monday is a Bank Holiday and that might be a problem, but a medical only takes a day and we’ve got the whole of Tuesday, with the deadline at midnight. It only takes a second to say yes.”
Before Rooney’s decision can even come into the equation, though, Everton must have accepted an offer from one of the two potential buyers. By 5pm yesterday, no fresh offers had been made for the 18-year-old, with United having failed with their opening £20 million bid and Newcastle having met with a similar response after offering £23.5 million. Now that Rooney’s transfer request has all but forced Everton into a sale, his two suitors seem certain to make improved offers over the weekend.
United remain highly confident that he will be at Old Trafford on Tuesday — if not on Monday, when he will surely be advised to stay away from Everton’s Barclays Premiership match at his prospective new workplace — but Newcastle are also quietly optimistic. “Manchester United don’t always get every player they want,” Freddy Shepherd, the Newcastle chairman, said. “They didn’t get Alan Shearer. He came to Newcastle. We shall wait and see what happens with Wayne Rooney.”
In his statement yesterday, put out by his advisers, Rooney spoke of his “need to be playing for a club that is in Europe every year”, and Newcastle will be encouraged that he did not specify the Champions League.
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Ferguson, surprisingly willing to elaborate on the matter, even went as far as to weigh up the striking permutations that will be available to him if, as he hopes and expects, Rooney chooses Old Trafford over St James’ Park. “I’d obviously be happy if that happened,” the United manager said. “What it would do is give us depth, give us options and give us goals from those four players (Rooney, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Alan Smith and Louis Saha) and I don’t think we should refuse that.”
The question is: will Rooney refuse United?