It Still Hurts When Looking Back..

Wayne Rooney has been a fantastic player for Manchester United. All of our fans will remember the promise that we saw in him when he was at Everton and how in his first two seasons in the Premier League he had quickly became England’s brightest young player.

We all know that Wayne joined us in 2004 just after the 2004/05 season had started after he had starred for England in the European Championships of that summer. Instantly he became my favourite player upon joining us and looking back at it now it’s quite hard writing down in words just how excited I felt when news broke that we had signed him.

After all back then despite being only 18 years old, Rooney was clearly an exceptional talent who in his two seasons for Everton’s first-team had shown that he had that special ‘something’ about him who everyone could not stop talking about.

I could write this article looking back at his Manchester United career so far, but what would the fun of that be? Instead you may not like what you are about to read, but I would just like to express my deep disappointment of last October’s events when news broke of Rooney wanting to leave Old Trafford.

As we know after our game against West Brom at Old Trafford which ended in a 2-2 draw, news broke about Rooney wanting to leave United in the media. Despite the reports in the English papers, I did not want to take them seriously and did not really believe the story back here in Bulgaria.

It was only when Sir Alex Ferguson spoke about Rooney wanting to leave in his press conference before the day before our home game against Bursaspor in the Champions League that I really believed that Rooney wanted out.

I cannot deny looking back at it now that when I heard the news from Sir Alex’s press conference that as a fan of United I felt betrayed and cheated by the news. Many fans I am sure felt the same way and that we were more still in shock than anything, after all this was Rooney who of course had been our best player by some distance in the 09/10 season.

During his career at United, despite being one of our key players on the pitch, Wayne had up until then remained in the background and had not complained about anything. He was dedicated and gave everything for the team, and the fans loved him for that.

This love further strengthened after the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo two summers ago. Everybody expected Rooney to shine for us and to his credit he did exactly that and took on his new responsibility by scoring and creating even more goals for us which we needed him to do.

At the start of the 2010/11 season after the World Cup, we saw a very different Rooney compared to the one that we have grown to love.  He looked nervous and looked incapable of producing anything near half the form that he had the previous year.

Despite that I was fully behind him, after all every top player goes through a bad patch or two; that is only natural. Alike many of our fans I thought that his form was partly down to a hangover from England’s failure at the World Cup and that perhaps it would take Rooney longer than anticipated to recover from his injury that he suffered towards the end of last season.

Of course at the start of the season sadly for information came out about Wayne’s private life and not so long after that came his transfer request.  As a fan I did not know how to react to the news and was frustrated. Even when the details about his transfer request came out, I still did not understand why Rooney at the time would want to leave us.

Thankfully of course two days after his request, Wayne signed a new contract extension and gave everyone at the club a massive boost. I will admit I was relieved about this as it kept one of the world’s best players at us. However for me Rooney will not quite be the ‘same’ player that I saw him as before.

Yes, I will support him but the events in October last year still linger with me and will not fade. His goal against Manchester City at Old Trafford in February was superb and won us the game. But every time that I see the replay of that goal, I cannot help but think of his transfer request despite enjoying the goal every time I see it.

Wayne of course is a very important player for United and proved that with his form in the second half of the season for us. Despite wanting to believe him again, I just cannot bring myself to do it as it still hurts for me to look back on his transfer request, but over time I hope that slight pain goes.

At least he’s since come out and said that he wants to remain a United player for the rest of his career, which of course all of our supporters are thrilled about. At 25 now he has the world seemingly at his feet and we all hope he has many more goals ahead of him yet.

By Pepa Zapryanova @pepinka_ bg