Arsene Wenger was never interested in signing Wayne Rooney
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has said that he did not consider approaching Manchester United to sign Wayne Rooney after Sir Alex Ferguson said the striker was leaving the club on Tuesday.
Ferguson's revelation led to several managers, including Real Madrid's Jose Mourinho and Roberto Mancini at Manchester City, to comment on the situation. While neither thought Rooney's departure from United to be very likely, both expressed their admiration
for the player.
"When I saw the headlines I just turned the page," Wenger said of the affair, which ended when Rooney extended his contract with United on Friday, 22 October. "It just shows it wasn’t worth making such a fuss about the story. I feel it was a situation where
there was not a lot to talk about. You have a player 18 months from [the end of] his contract and so the only surprise for me is that Manchester United came out."
Wenger, who signed Moroccan striker Marouane Chamakh on a free transfer this summer, is not known to spend lavishly on new players, unlike many other Premier League clubs.
The Frenchman said that he would not have been interested in signing Rooney in the next transfer window if he had not prolonged his contract with Ferguson's team.
"You don’t question the quality of Rooney but I was never thinking about that. Just a story from the start to the end was completely out of interest."
Wenger: Future of players never certain
The 61-year-old also said the significance of the story was blown out of proportion in the press, citing that contract negotiations placing the future of players in doubt is a regular occurrence at all clubs.
"Just because he has a different name it was certainly a story. But it is a super-classical story which happens in every club every week, so I could never is understand what was really special in this case. Certainly now Rooney has got the guarantees he
wanted, you can translate that like you want."
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