Rooney Saga: Why Manchester United shouldn’t splash cash on the PL’s assist king

Three-hundred thousand pounds a week, for five years. Whoever you are, it takes one generous employer to make that sort of an offer, but for a worker heading into his career’s latter stages, who more than occasionally underperforms at his job and doesn’t boast the greatest promise of top-level longevity, it’s a staggering sum to be rewarded with.

Wayne Rooney has not yet signed the new deal, of course, but all reports suggest that his doing so is only a matter of time, and this latest chapter in his long but cantankerous time at Manchester United has already proved a divisive one amongst the club’s fans. It is certainly strange to think that only months ago his time at Old Trafford seemed almost certain to be reaching a conclusion, with Alex Ferguson’s decision that his best side for the season’s biggest game did not include Rooney precipitating a lengthy and rather public dispute about the player’s contentment at the club – or lack thereof.

Perhaps, then, one of the few positives of the David Moyes regime thus far has been the placating of Rooney – certainly one of United’s better players – and the cultivating of a situation whereby an iconic player who spent the summer trying to force his robust frame through the exit door has, in the space of six months, committed his long-term future to Manchester United.

And yet, it is truly in the best interests of a club ravaged by debt-ridden owners and whose ageing, substandard squad is in desperate need of an almighty overhaul, not only to pass up the chance to cash in on perhaps their most bankable asset, but also to further increase their expenditure on a largely unloved player whose output is only likely to dwindle over the course of his new contract?

So maybe the decision to hang on to a star player is not as wise as it might appear. And yet, for all his on- and off-field tantrums, objectionable associates, semi-regular dippings in form, and the constant on-off battle with fitness, Rooney’s tangible output makes a compelling and almost water-tight case for his retention.

For instance, only Luis Suarez, Daniel Sturridge and Sergio Aguero boast a better combined tally of goals and assists in this season’s Premier League – and this in a campaign in which the above-named three have enjoyed career-best spells of form and Rooney has been comparatively peripheral. Of the division’s attackers, only Eden Hazard has played a greater number of successful passes than Rooney – the Belgian having been playing in a far better side and with five more appearances to his name.

More broadly, among the league’s forwards, Rooney is perhaps the most comprehensive contributor: be it tackles made, take-ons attempted, interceptions made, blocks lunged into, or clearances hoofed towards safety, Rooney’s name is consistently in the top ten.

On top of his continued shifts put in for the cause lies the uncomfortable truth that, were he to part ways with his current employers, his most likely destination would be to the capital’s gold-paved streets, with Chelsea. The west Londoners, manager Jose Mourinho acting as cheerleader, spent the entirety of last summer openly trying to woo the United forward, and their likely offering both in silverware and salary, coupled with the striker’s apparent reluctance to broaden his cultural horizons away from British shores, would render the current league leaders Rooney’s most likely suitors by some distance. It doesn’t the world’s sharpest mind [insert Rooney-related punchline here] to figure out that such a occurrence could well be disastrous for an already-plummeting United – not only for the two rivals’ comparative strength of squads, but also for outsiders’ perception of the club.

It would seem, then, that United’s desperation to keep Rooney has happened more through necessity than design, a perfect storm of ineptitude surrounding the club meaning that offloading the striker could represent a tipping point.

In a what’s fast turning out to be a period of floundering transition at Old Trafford, for the club to willfully lose a key attacker, probably to a chief domestic rival, and, as the summer showed, with no guarantee of the men behind the scenes being able to procure an adequate replacement, would simply leave the potential for too many nightmarish scenarios for the club to bring themselves to sanction the move. Therefore, a contract offer given through gritted teeth and another mark-up in wages is not only the lesser of two evils, but an act that – after the pending departure of Nemanja Vidic and the probable ones of Patrice Evra and Rio Ferdinand – damages the club’s image far less than another high-profile Fergie-era player adding to the growing impression of rats and sinking ships.

Is Rooney worth his prospective new wage? The easy answer would be that the market decides value, and as such Rooney is worth whatever a top club decides. But in this instance, his bumper new deal is almost certainly a result of a spiraling set of circumstances that has very little to do with the player’s form or talent. Quite simply, United, who suddenly find themselves in the most precarious of situations, have decided that losing Rooney would mark a potentially suicidal move – both to on-pitch clout and off-pitch morale. Ironically, the conditions that led the club to this point have a great deal to do with the departure of Alex Ferguson – the man who, in his final months at the club, did his very best to ensure that Rooney, having already been rewarded for his insurrection in 2011, would enjoy no such treatment again. In fact, his very last move as manager – his departure from the dugout – most likely facilitated history repeating itself.