Utd may get ruthless

Manchester United may run out of patience and sell Wayne Rooney in the summer if he continues to underperform, according to The Observer‘s Paul Hayward.

The News of the World reports that United boss Sir Alex Ferguson may move the striker on in the summer as “relations are so strained” that they are affecting the squad.

Last October Rooney signed a new five-year deal to stay at United just days after questioning whether the club had enough strength in depth to be successful.

According to the News of the World, Rooney “has been moaning about the squad again” in the wake of United’s 3-1 defeat to Liverpool.

But Hayward told Sunday Supplement that the 25-year-old, who has scored seven Premier League goals this season, should be more concerned by his own form which has dipped ever since he picked up an ankle injury in last March’s Champions League quarter-final, first leg clash against Bayern Munich.

Hungry

“It is coming up to a year since Rooney injured himself in the Munich game and he has been pretty much a shadow of himself ever since,” said Hayward, who was at Old Trafford on Saturday to see the England international score in United’s 2-0 FA Cup win over Arsenal.

“Rooney had one of his best games for a long, long time. The most interesting thing about his performance was that he looked so eager and hungry and involved. He hasn’t really looked that for United for a long, long time.

“When he signed the new deal in the autumn everybody thought that the old Rooney would suddenly burst back into life and that hasn’t happened either.

“The bicycle kick against Manchester City was a spectacular goal and he scored against Chelsea; he’s shown little bursts of coming back to life but in essence he is somewhere else and I would imagine that Manchester United’s patience will eventually run out with him because they can’t wait forever for Wayne Rooney to come back to his best form.

“In the end they will have to consider moving him on because if he’s not contributing, then you can’t keep him on the basis of reputation. Manchester United never keep players on the basis of reputation – if they are not contributing, they are out.

“Rooney has been given a lot of slack, a lot of time to come back from wherever he’s been; he’s only coming back intermittently so the club are entitled in the end to say ‘should we keep this player or is there a rupture that we can’t heal?’

Empty prospect

Jonathan Northcroft, of the Sunday Times, agreed that Rooney is underperforming and said that in itself will make it difficult for United to sell the striker – if indeed they do want to.

“When a club gets a player to re-sign a contract they can’t lose because if they do want to sell him they can command a much higher fee for moving him on and, as Paul said, if Fergie was looking for the old Wayne Rooney to come back, he may have hoped that putting the contract situation to bed might help him to do that.

“If they did try to sell him at the moment I just don’t see where he would go. I don’t think Manchester City, right now, are going to come back from him and I don’t think he’s playing well enough to attract Barcelona or Real Madrid who, realistically, are the only other two clubs who could afford him.

“So at the moment selling Wayne Rooney is a bit of an empty prospect, I would have thought.”