Wayne Rooney Will Either Win Chelsea The Title Or Become Their Second Biggest Mistake Ever

By Karan Yadav
11 years Ago

Wayne Rooney has gone from being an ‘angry and confused’ player at Manchester United to becoming the only transfer target for Chelsea in a matter of hours. Should Jose Mourinho go all out in bringing the striker to Stamford Bridge?

The Wayne Rooney transfer saga was rolling along pretty nicely all this while. Ever since Sir Alex Ferguson conveyed that Rooney wants to leave the club, stories were sporadically emerging on how unsettled the Englishman is at Manchester United, but not until David Moyes went on record to state, amongst other things, that Rooney would be useful whenever Robin van Persie was injured, did the script begin to gather momentum. Yet this hardly looked like an earth-shattering event till last afternoon; that’s when the cat was truly put amongst the pigeons.

Media houses broke the news that Chelsea’s official bid for Wayne Rooney had been outrightly rejected by Manchester United. The bid, they claimed, was A?10m plus an option to take either David Luiz or Juan Mata to Old Trafford. The first is Chelsea’s most improved player of last season, a player who is just coming off a spectacular show for the national team. While the second is double player of the year at Chelsea. Neither of the two players is worth less thanAi??A?30m, so in reality, the publications were claiming that the West London club had started negotiations aboveAi??A?40m for a player, whose present market value is in the region ofAi??A?25m.

Make no mistake about it; had Rooney not been on astronomical wages (A?225000/week) and had more than 2 years remaining on his current contract, he would have easily be priced aroundAi??A?35m. Ai??The fact is wages matter a lot; even a club of the stature of Chelsea have an upper limit whenever they contemplate signing a player, and that limit is a sum total of transfer fees and wages calculated over the contract period. So out of two similar players, the one who is on lesser wages will command more transfer fee than the one on higher wages, as then the buying club would be committing more to the player and thus would be paying lesser to the selling club. The selling club is also happy with the deal as they are able to remove the said player’s salary from its weekly wage bill, in addition to getting reasonable cash.

So considering both Luiz and Mata had more years left on their contract, were a couple of years younger, and were on wages that were roughly one-third of that of Rooney, the sensational piece of news didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Here we are not even talking about how Mata/Luiz were central to Chelsea’s long term future and Rooney clearly wasn’t. Something seemed wrong about all this; somehow things weren’t adding up. That’s when Chelsea decided to clear the air.

“Chelsea Football Club can confirm that yesterday it made a written offer to Manchester United for the transfer of Wayne Rooney. Although the terms of that offer are confidential, for the avoidance of doubt and contrary to what is apparently being briefed to the press in Sydney, the proposed purchase does not include the transfer or loan of any players from Chelsea to Manchester United.”

Chelsea didn’t want the bid to go public, but were forced to release a statement confirming their interest but clarifying their position, as silence yesterday might just have destabilized a couple of integral members of their squad. Hardly an ideal scenario to have, with the said players expected to report for club duty after an extended break.

Chelsea further implied that the news had in fact leaked from Sydney, where United are present for their preseason. The press was clearly fed the story, as not only the usual suspects but also the reliable sources jumped on to the bandwagon in a flash. But why would Manchester United leak the story? One can only speculate, but it’s possible that they might just be interested in signing Juan Mata themselves, after failing to lure Thiago Alcantara from Barcelona and may be using the press to let Chelsea know their intentions; at the same time unsettling the player himself. Another reason can be that since they know that their player is anyway going to leave, why not openly put him on the market and invite bids from other clubs also in the hunt for a striker, thereby leading to a bidding war which increases the price, which is fair on United’s part.

Chelsea are hardly the club that publically acknowledges bids, transfer requests, interests, etc., as they prefer to operate behind closed doors. But, now they can’t. After winning his first game in charge of Chelsea in Thailand, Jose Mourinho went on record to acknowledge that Wayne Rooney was his only transfer target this summer.Ai??”I think that this situation is clear ai??i?? nothing is a secret anymore. The official bid is just about a certain amount of money and doesn’t involve players. We want the player. We made the bid and now we have nothing more to say. Now it’s up to Manchester United“, said Mourinho in the post match press conference. When further asked if Chelsea had made any other bids, he said “No, and we won’t“. When asked whether it was now Rooney or bust, Jose Mourinho answered, “Yes“.

For Chelsea, all their cards are on the table now. The latest quotes from Mourinho make his position crystal clear. Rooney is his primary transfer target and this is a transfer that he, and not Michael Emenalo, is pursuing and has got the board’s backing to land the striker. This further substantiates the fact that the new manager isn’t comfortable with the strike-force of Torres, Ba and Lukaku. Wayne Rooney has been one of the best players in the Premier League in the last decade or so, scoring 156 goals in 292 starts, and his pedigree is unquestionable. He hasn’t been in the best of forms, but he hasn’t really played as centre forward of late for Manchester United. He is well capable of playing across the front four positions in a 4-2-3-1 system and such versatility is what Mourinho is yearning for, if not for his commendable work rate. The fact that he’s English and will add to the homegrown quota must have also piqued Chelsea’s interest in him, in addition to the fact that he’s one of the biggest names in English, if not world, football and will facilitate a pike in revenues from shirt sales, image rights, etc.

The problems, from a Chelsea perspective, are his astronomically high wages (which will become a matter of contention if the fee value goes up), his attitude, and the fact that this can easily turn into Fernando Torres II.

Firstly, the highest paid player at Chelsea is Fernando Torres, who’s earning A?175000/week and unless Rooney is desperate for a move to Chelsea and thus agrees to a wage cut (unlikely), this will disrupt the wage structure at the club. Then this isn’t the first time Rooney has shown his dissatisfaction at United and there’s every chance that the player may sulk again or be embroiled in a controversy, leading to a tricky situation for the club. Lastly, Chelsea are yet to recover from the grave error in judgement when they previously signed a 27-year old superstar striker from a rival club and Rooney’s form has also been on a downhill for year and a half. This can easily become the second biggest mistake in the history of this football club. Just to give an indication, if Chelsea sign Rooney on a 4 year contract forAi??A?25m (and not more) and pay him A?250000 per week (and not higher), then this signing will cost themAi??A?73m over 4 years. Their total commitment towards Fernando Torres wasAi??A?100m.

Either this move will land Chelsea the title or things will go horribly wrong for them – again. There is no middle ground in this saga. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die”, it was rightly said.

Categories: Chelsea FC, English Premier League, Features
Tags: Wayne Rooney

Wayne Rooney has gone from being an ‘angry and confused’ player at Manchester United to becoming the only transfer target for Chelsea in a matter of hours. Should Jose Mourinho go all out in bringing the striker to Stamford Bridge?

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