Wayne Rooney: My Decade in the Premier League. Wayne Rooney

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       COVER

       TITLE PAGE

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      FOREWORD BY SIR ALEX FERGUSON

      INTRODUCTION

      1 DESIRE

      2 HOME

      3 CARRINGTON

      4 PAYBACK

5 GRAFT

       6 PRESSURE

       7 CHANGE

       8 CHAMPIONS

       9 EUROPE

       10 SACRIFICE

       11 MOSCOW

       12 DEBUT

       13 MANCHESTER

       14 RIVALS

       15 FACT!

       16 NIGHTMARE

       17 PASSION

       18 PAIN

       19 CONTROVERSY

       20 FAMILY

       21 OFFICE

       22 MARGINS

       EPILOGUE

       PLATE SECTION

       ABOUT WAYNE ROONEY

       ABOUT MATT ALLEN

       COPYRIGHT

       ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      There are so many people who have helped and worked alongside me to make my Premier League dream become a reality. First and foremost my parents and family have played a massive role in getting me where I am today.

      All the coaches and managers I have worked with since being a young lad, my agent Paul Stretford and the people who work alongside him, and all my team mates and friends in and out of the game: thanks for being there. But through working on this book and reflecting on the highs and lows of the last 10 years there are two people who merit specific mention.

      To my wife Coleen, thanks for being there through the rough and the smooth; you will never know how much your love and support means to me. To my son Kai, you’re my first thought in the morning and you give me my last smile at the end of the day. I love you both so much, you’re my inspiration and my motivation every single day.

      Thanks for everything.

      Love, Wayne (and Daddy) xxx

      There were plenty of eyebrows raised when I persuaded Manchester United’s board of directors to sanction a multimillion pound move to try to prise away Wayne Rooney from Everton.

      The lad was still only eighteen, but he had already shown in the two years he’d been in Everton’s first team that he was a rare talent.

      The Everton backroom staff had done a marvellous job nurturing the youngster through their academy to the day he made his debut for the first team when still some weeks short of his seventeenth birthday.

      Long before he made his bow for the senior side everybody in the game was well aware that Everton had unearthed a little gem, and it didn’t take him long to announce his arrival on the big stage.

      Everton were Wayne’s club as a schoolboy, so we can only imagine how he felt to pull on that famous royal blue shirt and run out to the roar of the Goodison Park crowd.

      It wasn’t a surprise that he took to first team football with the minimum of fuss. Wayne Rooney was born to play football and it was plain to see from the outset that his future as a major figure in the game was assured.

      We were under no illusions that it would take anything other than a very, very large cheque if we were to tempt Everton into agreeing to let Wayne make the short move up the M62.

      I suppose everyone has their price and eventually we managed to negotiate a deal with Everton to secure the services of the finest young player of his generation.

      There’s no question that it was a gigantic amount of money we paid for a player who hadn’t long been eligible to vote, but we knew what we were doing.

      Every so often a player comes along who is a racing certainty to make the grade as a professional, and Wayne Rooney was one of those.

      It wasn’t a gamble, it was an investment in the future, and there can be no doubt that the lad from Croxteth proceeded to pay off that outlay numerous times in the years that followed.

      If anyone had any lingering doubts regarding our decision then they were almost instantly and conclusively dispelled when he scored a hat-trick on his debut in a Champions League group match against Turkish club Fenerbahçe at Old Trafford. Talk about starting the repayments early!

      It wouldn’t have bothered me if he’d taken weeks to score his first goal for us, but I’ve got to say I was overjoyed that he hit the ground running in classic style.

      The rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool has been well documented over the years, but here was one Scouser who had immediately become an adopted Mancunian.

      That was just the first few lines in a marvellous story that has continued to unfold during his career with Manchester United. He has become one of the mainstays of the club and is generally recognised as one of the finest players of the Premier League and Champions League era.

      Wayne has also along the way ironed out the self-discipline problems he had as a youngster. Once looked upon as petulant and always likely to get in hot water with the authorities, he is now a reformed individual who sets the standards for the rest of the team.

      It takes strength of character to overcome those types of personal traits, but he dug deep and eradicated what was a counter-productive СКАЧАТЬ