Читать книгу Wayne Rooney: My Decade in the Premier League - Wayne Rooney, Wayne Rooney - Страница 5

There were plenty of eyebrows raised when I persuaded Manchester United’s board of directors to sanction a multimillion pound move to try to prise away Wayne Rooney from Everton.

The lad was still only eighteen, but he had already shown in the two years he’d been in Everton’s first team that he was a rare talent.

The Everton backroom staff had done a marvellous job nurturing the youngster through their academy to the day he made his debut for the first team when still some weeks short of his seventeenth birthday.

Long before he made his bow for the senior side everybody in the game was well aware that Everton had unearthed a little gem, and it didn’t take him long to announce his arrival on the big stage.

Everton were Wayne’s club as a schoolboy, so we can only imagine how he felt to pull on that famous royal blue shirt and run out to the roar of the Goodison Park crowd.

It wasn’t a surprise that he took to first team football with the minimum of fuss. Wayne Rooney was born to play football and it was plain to see from the outset that his future as a major figure in the game was assured.

We were under no illusions that it would take anything other than a very, very large cheque if we were to tempt Everton into agreeing to let Wayne make the short move up the M62.

I suppose everyone has their price and eventually we managed to negotiate a deal with Everton to secure the services of the finest young player of his generation.

There’s no question that it was a gigantic amount of money we paid for a player who hadn’t long been eligible to vote, but we knew what we were doing.

Every so often a player comes along who is a racing certainty to make the grade as a professional, and Wayne Rooney was one of those.

It wasn’t a gamble, it was an investment in the future, and there can be no doubt that the lad from Croxteth proceeded to pay off that outlay numerous times in the years that followed.

If anyone had any lingering doubts regarding our decision then they were almost instantly and conclusively dispelled when he scored a hat-trick on his debut in a Champions League group match against Turkish club Fenerbahçe at Old Trafford. Talk about starting the repayments early!

It wouldn’t have bothered me if he’d taken weeks to score his first goal for us, but I’ve got to say I was overjoyed that he hit the ground running in classic style.

The rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool has been well documented over the years, but here was one Scouser who had immediately become an adopted Mancunian.

That was just the first few lines in a marvellous story that has continued to unfold during his career with Manchester United. He has become one of the mainstays of the club and is generally recognised as one of the finest players of the Premier League and Champions League era.

Wayne has also along the way ironed out the self-discipline problems he had as a youngster. Once looked upon as petulant and always likely to get in hot water with the authorities, he is now a reformed individual who sets the standards for the rest of the team.

It takes strength of character to overcome those types of personal traits, but he dug deep and eradicated what was a counter-productive part of his make-up.

Then there was his little wobble in the autumn of 2010, when he announced that he wanted to up sticks and leave Old Trafford.

I was shocked, and not a little disappointed, but it didn’t take long to set him straight on that little matter and soon enough he was putting pen to paper on an extended contract.

I’m not about to say what was said between us during our discussions at that time, but I knew from the start that his heart was still with Manchester United and that all wasn’t lost as we set about showing him the error of his thinking. Wayne Rooney has it within his grasp to carve for himself a very special place in the history of Manchester United.

He has already started overtaking long-standing club records, and with age on his side there are no limits to what he can achieve before the time comes for him to call it a day.

I’d like to think I’ve made one or two good decisions during my time in football – and a few I’d rather forget! – but there is no question that the signing of Wayne Rooney from Everton is right up there with the best of them.