SOCCER: English FA Cup fifth round: Dominic Fifield previews the return of Wayne Rooney to Goodison Park and Everton, the club of his boyhood dreams
Wayne Rooney sent one of his former team-mates a text message this week. Deciphering the garbled abbreviations that is text talk may have distracted Alan Stubbs from his putting during Everton's three-day break in Portugal, but the sentiment expressed in the jumble of letters and numbers was clear enough. The teenager is relishing his chance to return to Goodison Park.
Everton has long anticipated the inevitable homecoming, though that will not draw the spite from the frenzy this evening. This is a premature visit, the FA Cup fifth-round having pre-empted the Premiership fixture in April, but that will do little to quell the bile the England striker will have to swim through when he takes to the turf today. Most would shiver at the prospect, though Rooney is invariably exceptional.
There will be few sterner tests of the 19-year-old's character than that awaiting him at the stadium where he took his first startling steps in the professional game. The dipping, last-minute shot over David Seaman that defeated the league champions Arsenal and marked a staggering first Premiership goal in October 2002 may flicker across the big screens in either corner of the ground before kick-off. The footage of the youth-team striker ripping up his shirt to reveal the now infamous slogan "Once a Blue, always a Blue" scrawled across his vest will presumably not feature.
Everton are fourth in the league and competing for a place in the Cup quarter-final, but resentment still simmers at Rooney's summer of agitation that eventually prompted his £27 million move to United on deadline day in August. Some still vent their spleen at the board that sold their favourite son. Many will watch Rooney trot out today gripped by regret.
"I'd have liked to have worked with him longer than I did," said the manager, David Moyes. "He was an excellent player here, but I'm sure he's still improving."
"I just feel a sense of what if?" said Alex Bell, an Everton supporter who delighted as Rooney rampaged on to the scene three years ago. "Every Evertonian was thrilled that, in spite of the years of mismanagement, we somehow had on our hands the finest English player of his generation. The loss of that sense of hope is what fuels the anger, but many will just have a great sense of sadness as, despite all that has gone on, he is one of us. It's just that events have dictated he plays elsewhere."
The hope is that the presence of extra police and stewards, and a minder and former SAS man called Ginger, who will shadow Rooney off the pitch, will ensure the tension does not overflow.
"When Eric Cantona went back to Leeds it was volatile, but nothing spilt on to the pitch from the terraces," said Alex Ferguson. "I just hope the game passes off the right way without anything stupid happening."
The striker himself will be anxious not to allow emotion better him. "Wayne's apprehensive, but he's looking forward to this match," said Stubbs. The centre half was Rooney's neighbour when the youngster moved up the coast to Freshfield and, of the Everton players, probably knows him best of all. "He has matured even more over the last six months and he deals with situations a lot better now.
"If he did score, God forbid, I don't think we'd see too much emotion from him. I'd hope he'd just turn around and walk back to the halfway line. He knows now what potential situations could flare into if he did anything else, but there's every chance any abuse could make him play even better. We've all seen how Wayne deals with pressure - through the European Championships and in the Champions League - and it's not been a problem to him."
"His temperament is first class," said Ferguson. "He responds to the big-game atmosphere. Yes, he's going to get some stick, but that's all part of the modern-day game. Wayne has the temperament to cope with it and I think they probably know that too."
The evidence suggests that, for all his foul-mouthed ranting during United's 4-2 victory at Arsenal this month, Rooney is developing a cooler outlook. In terms of his disciplinary record, he is improving dramatically. There were eight cautions and a red card in his first season as a senior, 12 yellows last term, but only four to date this campaign. The only concern is that three of those came at Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal - he scored decisive goals in the first two games and was outstanding at Highbury - and the incessant abuse he received at Eastlands last Sunday prompted him to gesture the scoreline to home supporters. The provocation will feel closer to home today.
"Look, he's a competitive player," said Ferguson. "All great players are competitive. His temperament has never been an issue. He got a three-match ban for what happened against Bolton (pushing Tal Ben Haim), which we thought was absolutely ridiculous, but there hasn't been any other problem. He competes. And why shouldn't he compete? He has everything in his locker, a great personality, and the way he trains is terrific. We're delighted with him."
The hosts may find
Rooney unrecognisable this afternoon. He was always going to develop into a world-class talent, whether nurtured at Goodison Park or Old Trafford, but he struggled as Everton toiled last season. Too often he cut a frustrated figure on the periphery, necessity dictating that he was denied free rein. His progress has undoubtedly been smoothed amid the luxuries at the other end of the East Lancs Road.
A striker who contributed only 17 goals in 77 appearances as a Blue has already scored 13 times in 26 appearances as a Red. The majority for Everton were spectacular.
Those raw flashes of the unexpected remain, though the lavish supply line at United has provided more opportunities. Even allowing for their astonishing progress this season, it is still hard to imagine an Everton player emulating the superlative through ball produced by Ruud van Nistelrooy against Fenerbahce in September that gave Rooney his first United goal and prompted a debut hat-trick.
"Wayne is playing alongside better players now and being given more chances to score," Stubbs said. "When he was here we gave him the ball and expected him to do something with it. He was the player who could come up with something unexpected when we needed it. There was too much pressure on him at a young age. Now he's got Ryan Giggs on one wing and Cristiano Ronaldo on the other, so he's getting five or 10 chances every game. Wayne's already world class, but I think there is still so much potential there."
Moyes, who once described Rooney as "one of the last street footballers, part of a dying breed", commented: "We all seem to produce these well-chiselled academy footballers these days and they don't have the roughness, or spontaneity, that makes Wayne what he is."
That instinct still underpins everything Rooney does - two superb goals against Middlesbrough in the fourth round are evidence of as much - though United have developed other facets. His positioning and awareness have been honed. Moyes might have achieved as much if granted time to work with the forward, though, given Everton's reliance upon him last term, it is debatable whether the progress would have been so swift.
Rooney's opportunities at Old Trafford have benefited from the prolonged absences of van Nistelrooy, Alan Smith and Louis Saha through major injury. All four are in the squad travelling to Merseyside today, though the focus will be solely on the youngest of their number.
The England striker is used to that, even if he is still adjusting to life as a celebrity. His rare forays into the public gaze are still splashed on the news pages, though a St Valentine's Day trip to London to see Chicago in the West End represented something of a refreshing change from the usual traipsing after his fiancee, Coleen McLoughlin, on shopping trips. The image of the footballer lugging numerous bags crammed with designer clothes in his partner's wake, clearly pining for his PlayStation, is an enduring one.
As ever he will be happier out on the pitch, even today. The fifth-round tie has yet to sell out, the striker Evertonians once flooded to see apparently now driving them away. McLoughlin paid a surprise visit to Bellefield recently to deliver a pair of Rooney's football boots to Stubbs. This evening the captain will probably be chasing an identical pair all over Goodison Park as he pursues the tearaway who got away.
"It was unbelievable business to raise £27 million for a teenage lad who was still more potential than proven talent and it has helped Everton enormously off the pitch, maybe more than Wayne would have done on it," Stubbs claimed. "People don't realise how much of an impact that money has made in helping Everton turn the corner.
"I know Wayne's chuffed to bits by how well we are doing. If he could have been at the derby game then he would have. I'd like us to beat United with Wayne playing, so there can't be any excuses, but just because he's left doesn't mean he's stopped supporting Everton."
Whisper it this evening, but once a Blue, clearly always a Blue.
