Man United mishandled Rooney - Wenger
The Wayne Rooney affair has caught the imagination of the football world all around the world as the striker finally decides to re-join Manchester United after a week of speculations regarding his immediate future.
Rooney had announced that he wanted to move over to some other club with Manchester City the most likely candidate as he feared that Man U had lost its ability to rope in big players and was in his opinion losing its status as the best English club.
His outburst sent shockwaves and triggered a debate on why he was mulling such a decision. Eventually it was announced that he would stay at Old Trafford and had agreed to stay at the club for five more years.
One of the biggest rivals of Man United is Arsenal and their manager Arsene Wenger expressed his surprise on Wayne Rooney's decision to re-sign with Manchester United.
He said that he was convinced that Rooney was set to go and join some other club in the English league.
"Once the club came out and said they couldn't find agreement, it was a message we want to sell," Wenger said at Arsenal's London Colney training base, north of London.
The veteran Arsenal manager feels that Man United were wrong to reveal Rooney's discontent.
"I feel it was a situation where there was not a lot to talk about in fact," the Frenchman said.
"It was a player with 18 years (he means months) left on his contract, he speaks with his club, and the only surprise was that Man United came out with it."
Arsenal has a big match coming up against the Manchester City outfit in the English Premier League on Sunday.
However, there is little interest in the proceedings on the field as football fans focus on the moves by Rooney.
But for Wenger the concentration is all on the game rather than the Rooney affair.
"I never was really interested in the story because what happened with Wayne Rooney happens to every club, every year, plenty of times," Wenger said.
"So it was because he was a different name, it was certainly a story but it's a classical, super classical story that happens in every club, every week.
"So I could never understand what was really special in that case."
However, Wenger is not happy with how some of the leading players in the game take their clubs for granted without realizing that their teams make heavy investment in them.
He added that a player should never renegotiate his contract in the middle of a contract and should in fact play until the last day of their commitment with full sincerity.
For him this was the only way of expressing loyalty for a team.
"That means you work, you know it's the last day, you work, tomorrow you go somewhere else, but on the last day you give a hundred percent for your club, that's real loyalty."
Meanwhile Barcelona’s coach Pep Guardiola claimed that despite of the controversy there are no two opinions about Rooney’s pedigree as a player.
He added that he was one of the most sought after players in Europe and Man United was lucky that they somehow held onto him.
"I just can tell you he is a very, very good player, he is a top player. And he is now playing in one of the best teams of the world, so I don't know," Guardiola said in a news conference ahead of Barcelona's league match against Real Zaragoza, the Spanish
giants are keeping a close eye on the developments at Old Trafford as they work towards another domestic title.
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