As Wayne Rooney celebrates his 40th birthday, Chris Beesley looks how Everton's move to Hill Dickinson Stadium can change future transfer trends
ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley has covered Everton and Liverpool both in the Premier League and abroad since 2005. He cut his teeth in professional sports journalism at the Ellesmere Port Pioneer and then the Welsh edition of the Daily Post, where he also covered Manchester United. Prior to that he worked on the student newspaper Pluto at the University of Central Lancashire, a role in which he first encountered David Moyes. Chris is well-known for his sartorial elegance and the aforementioned Scottish manager once enquired of him at a press conference: "Is that your dad's suit you've got on?" while the tradition continued in 2023 with new Blues boss Sean Dyche complimenting him on his smart appearance.
Everton's move to Hill Dickinson Stadium should help them having to sell their best young talent like Wayne Rooney in the future
Everton's move to Hill Dickinson Stadium should help them having to sell their best young talent like Wayne Rooney in the future
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Many happy returns to Wayne Rooney on his landmark birthday. But while the player himself might not have any regrets at how things turned out, Evertonians certainly do.
The old adage goes that 'life begins at 40; but in truth Rooney has already achieved everything in football and he got there much quicker than most. This came through him being thrust into senior football when, rather than being ‘sweet 16’ he was a precocious man-child, who combined an almost freakish physical maturity and strength beyond his tender years with world-class ability, ensuring he was terrorising senior pros twice his age.
When Rooney was still a schoolboy, that wise old sage and student of the game Colin Harvey, hailed by Dr David France as being the greatest living Evertonian, but one of football’s sternest taskmasters and certainly not a hysterical character prone to hyperbole,reverentially remarked of the protege: “Oh yes. He’s like a young Kenny Dalglish. Only quicker of thought and quicker across the ground.”
In short, the lad from Croxteth is the most talented home-grown player that Everton Football Club has ever produced. He won every major honour in the game at club level, but rather than achieved in a royal blue jersey, Rooney’s treasure trove of honours were all secured down the East Lancs Road with Manchester United.
Five Premier League titles, an FA Cup, three League Cups, the Champions League, the Europa League and the FIFA Club World Cup. Each one lifted with the Red Devils before he eventually returned to Goodison Park as a ‘Prodigal Son’ in 2017 as Manchester United and England’s all-time leading goalscorer at the time to book-end his Premier League career, back with his boyhood team.
With that speed Harvey had once waxed lyrical about having faded, prompting Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport to lament: “He is a walking monument, it is sad to see him in this condition,” after Atalanta triumphed 5-1 in a Europa League game at Goodison Park, there were still some additional highlights with Everton in his second coming.
Even if the legs had gone, the footballing brain was still razor sharp as demonstrated just six days after the aforementioned drubbing at the hands of the Serie A side when Rooney completed a hat-trick – against David Moyes’ West Ham United – with a goal from inside his own half.
Sadly, though, the boy who unveiled his home-made 'Once a blue, always a blue' T-shirt after scoring for Everton in the FA Youth Cup would fall short in his silverware quest with his home city side, both in that competition with an over-reliance on his one-man show proving too much against a better all-round Aston Villa side in the final, and then in his two spells – a record 13 years apart in the senior side.
Rooney’s exploits for England in the 2004 European Championships saw him propelled from being 'our Wayne' among the Goodison Park faithful to some kind of national treasure and before the summer was out, he’d completed his transfer to Manchester United.
Sir Alex Ferguson, who John Parrott this week claimed on the Royal Blue podcast, had earlier coveted his namesake and the snooker legend’s brother-in-law Big Dunc, had been sniffing around Rooney for some time. Parrott recalls the Old Trafford gaffer once asking him what he thought Rooney’s best position was and he replied: “In a blue shirt!”
Despite such protests from the star of the baize, and even Bill Kenwright’s mother Hope who berated Ferguson down the telephone, to give him a taste of his own medicine when it came to the infamous ‘hairdryer treatment’ as only a Scouse nan could, when having proclaimed in a typically theatrical manner “they’re stealing our boy,” the Everton chairman passed over the receiver to the Manchester United manager only for a female voice on the other end to tell him that Rooney was worth fifty million pounds, the deal of course went through.
For a long time, Rooney was considered a Judas figure among many Blues supporters and his on-field returns to his former stomping ground were marred by several ugly flashpoints. Even though Evertonians eventually forgave him and he came back to the club, they didn’t forget.
When Rooney was trying to deliver a speech to the crowd following the 2-0 win over Southampton in Goodison Park’s final Premier League fixture on May 18, many started chanting “Manchester is full of s**t.” The former player, who was accompanied by one of his sons, hit back with an X-rated response of his own, saying: “I am a f*****g Scouser, by the way,” but on what was generally a day of celebration, a message had been delivered.
But was the sale – for what was a world record fee for a teenager – a necessity though? Parrott also suggested that cashing in on Rooney actually saved Everton from potential ruin, given the state of the finances at the club at the time.
He wasn’t the first boyhood Blue of that era to jump ship at an early age either. Francis Jeffers, who departed Goodison Park before his 21st birthday, signing for Arsenal in an £8million transfer in 2001, believes the financial benefits of the club’s relocation to Hill Dickinson Stadium – where the club now have the potential to play in front of the biggest regular crowds in their history and financial experts have estimated they can rake in an additional £60million a year in revenue – can prevent such moves from happening in the future.
Speaking earlier this year, Jeffers told the ECHO: “We shouldn’t be selling our best young players and hopefully we don’t have to now. When I was coming through, people did have to leave to keep the club in a stable position.
“In that season that I left, Bally (Michael Ball) went to Rangers and Dunney (Richard Dunne) had gone a bit earlier to Manchester City. We certainly won’t be doing it now, but we shouldn’t have been doing it then.
“For me, I didn’t want to leave Everton, but I sort of knew, I had no choice really. I was going into the last year of my contract.
“I was going into the last year and the club obviously knew that and thought if we can’t agree a new contract with him, we’re probably better letting him go now.
“When you used to speak to Bill (Kenwright), it’s not that he’d tell you, but he had no choice. We had to sell our best players, it’s what we did.
“We’ve done it for too long. We should be hanging on to our best players and hopefully now with the way the club is and the position with it moving forwards and going in the right direction, we can hang on to the best players so we can start building good teams.”
It’s not too often that a talent the size of Wayne Rooney comes along, but if Everton do produce a player approaching his magnitude again, they should now be in a position to keep hold of him for the best years of his career.