Wayne Rooney’s new £300,000-a-week five-year deal shows Manchester United’s desperation. Just like in 2010 Wayne Rooney has taken advantage of Manchester United when they have been at their weakest – they need his name and reputation as much as his goals
You have to hand it to Wayne Rooney and Manchester United have, in astronomical terms because the England forward certainly knows how to play the money game to his advantage.
Rooney has finally agreed a new five-and-a-half year contract to stay at Old Trafford until close to his 34th birthday and he will be paid £300,000-a-week to remain in the No 10 shirt.
Not for bad for a player who, just 12 months ago, was hurtling towards the exit door following the breakdown of his relationship with Sir Alex Ferguson.
Back then, Rooney had lost form and fitness, Robin van Persie had usurped him as United’s main man and the ultimate kick in the teeth was looming on the horizon with Ferguson proceeding to name him as a substitute in the decisive Champions League defeat against Real Madrid last March.
At that stage, United and Ferguson were prepared to offload Rooney to any club willing to offer in the region of £25million while the player was also quickly coming to the realisation that his future would be best served elsewhere.
The fact that we have now arrived at the situation where United and Rooney have made up to the extent that he has committed the rest of his career to the club is remarkable.
It is also perhaps a sign of United’s current position of weakness and the reality that Rooney genuinely had few better options elsewhere.
To suggest that United and Rooney are stuck with each other would be over-playing the point, but there is certainly a sense that the new contract has been the result of a climb-down by both sides.
Rooney was ready to leave last summer, prepared to end his nine-year spell at United to play for Chelsea.
The 28-year-old was seeking a new challenge, wanted to be loved and treated as the central figure again following his final, wasted season under Ferguson.
And while United would have been prepared to let him go had Ferguson remained in charge, the danger of losing the club’s poster boy in the first weeks of David Moyes’s reign as manager was simply too damaging to contemplate.
Still, United were not prepared to throw a new contract under Rooney’s nose last summer. Far from it.
The view from inside the club was that the player had hardly earned the right to hold a gun to United’s head having just ended his worst season at Old Trafford.
Ed Woodward, David Gill’s successor as United’s deal-maker, admitted that the club were ready to wait until the summer of 2014 before taking a view on Rooney and that there was even the possibility of allowing him to run his contract down to become a free agent in 2015.
United were happy to talk tough at the same time as telling Chelsea where to go, but that was then and this is now.
From being the champions last summer and the dominant force in English football, this season has seen a dramatic changing of the landscape.
United have had a shocker. They currently sit languishing in seventh position in the Premier League, are out of both domestic cups and relying on an unlikely triumph in the Champions League final in May to play in the competition again next season.
From holding all the aces on Rooney in July, they have now seen the tables turned, with the player’s return to form this season restoring his negotiating power.
The end result is that Rooney, just like in October 2010, when he used interest in Manchester City to spook United into handing him a lucrative new contract, has taken advantage of the club when they have been at their weakest.
Strangely enough, while his form in the early months of the campaign hinted at a return to his best form; recent weeks have been less impressive.
The persistent groin injury which forced him out of the team in January has clearly blunted Rooney’s effectiveness and 2014, to date, has been a wash-out, with no goals in five games as United have struggled.
