Wayne Rooney faces a reunion with Everton at Old Trafford this evening, but do not expect to see him exchanging pre-match pleasantries with David Moyes, who has served a writ against the Manchester United forward after being incensed by comments in his autobiography.
The Everton manager issued proceedings against the Daily Mail in August because of a complaint about the way the newspaper had serialised Rooney’s account of his acrimonious departure from Goodison Park in August 2004. It has been confirmed that separate actions have been launched against Rooney, Hunter Davies, the player’s ghostwriter, and HarperCollins, the publisher.
Moyes declined to answer questions on the matter at his pre-match press conference yesterday, but he is known to be furious that he was blamed in the book for Rooney’s controversial £30 million transfer from Everton to United and specifically for a “breach of confidence” after the player cited his unhappiness at newspaper revelations about his private life when informing the manager of his desire to leave Merseyside.
Moyes believes that the England striker’s claims in the book raise unwarranted criticism of the man-management skills he has shown during his time in charge of Everton and previously Preston North End.
“If you accuse a manager of being dishonest and breaking confidences, that may affect what other people think of him, including other players and the supporters,” Mel Goldberg, Moyes’s solicitor, said at the time. “He [Moyes] feels very badly about that.”
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The parting of the ways was acrimonious, but with more than two years having passed and with Rooney having previously sought to gloss over the reasons for his departure from Goodison Park, Moyes was taken aback by the ferocity of the criticism in the book and in particular the player’s version of the breakdown of their relationship in the weeks leading up to his transfer to Old Trafford.
Moyes and Goldberg are also understood to have challenged the veracity of two other claims from Rooney — one that the manager “accused me of breaking his CD player” and the other that Moyes accused him of “eating too many f***ing McDonald’s”.