The fat lad throws a fit!

Last updated : 25 July 2006 By Les Roberts

In the part of his book dedicated to his move from Everton to Man United, Wayne Rooney attacks David Moyes and, basically, blames him for the whole thing!

Which is a shame really because I would have hoped that he'd have been above such a bile-filled rant, but I guess it's all about selling his new book.

He states that his reason for leaving was all down to Moyses, apparently, ‘overbearing' and ‘controlling' managerial style.

He also claims that things were so bad at Everton that he was seriously considering a move to Newcastle! And I quote: "If no-one else had come in I would have gone to Newcastle"

When you read daft statements like that it makes you realize that he had clearly gone as mad as a box of frogs!

But, mental or not, you have to question the ways in which he qualifies his statement on Moyses managerial style.

The fat lad continues: "I suppose being young and confident and playing for England at 17, I wasn't bothered about upsetting him or answering back."

Which sounds to me like Moyes was doing nothing more than asserting the fact that he was the manager and Rooney was nothing more than some 17-year-old kid with a precocious talent and an attitude to match.

He then adds: "I suppose he [Moyes] expected to get most of the attention himself following a good season when Everton had ended seventh. But when he realised I was getting so much of the limelight I felt he resented it."

But since when has Everton having a decent season been about one particular player or the manager?

And I seem to remember that Moyes was awarded Manager of the Year after that seventh placed finish, which is all the limelight a manager needs after a good season!

The boy was clearly beginning to think that he was bigger than the club and everyone involved with it!

His petulance is further underlined when he says how he told Moyes that he would never play for him again after he accused the Blues' boss of leaking the brothel stories to the local press.

He says: "In front of all the players I had a real go at him: 'How did that story get out, except from you?' I raged. ‘You're a f****ing joke. I don't want to play for you ever again.'"

Our budding young sleuth was clearly dead on the money with this little piece of detective work as the story was actually leaked by The Sunday Mirror and not, as Rooney asserts, the Liverpool Echo.

Whether or not Moyes was to blame in all of this is a fairly moot point at this stage as, it doesn't matter who the player and manager in question are, it's a simple fact that a manager cannot be undermined by any of his playing staff!

But, if Moyes was behind the alleged leaks, then questions do seriously need to be asked of him.

His outburst is also a far cry from the noises he was making shortly after his 18th birthday when he stated that: “The boss [Moyes] is great. He tells me when I'm doing things right and when I'm doing things wrong, which is just what I need.”

So things must have gone downhill really quickly as his acrimonious split with all things Everton came just 10 months after he made that statement!

Either that or he's lying somewhere along the line!

It's difficult to be able to comment with any great authority, as I'm only going on the bits of the book that have been released by the press (there's no way I'm buying the frigging thing!), but the Moyes allegations appear to be the vitriolic and petty ramblings of a kid that started to believe his own hype far too quickly.

There's clearly a lot more to this story than he reveals, but it's doubtful that we'll ever get to the bottom of what really happened.

Instead of giving an honest and balanced account, Rooney has, unfortunately, gone down the route of an attempted character assassination of Moyes to exonerate himself from any of the ugliness surrounding his move to Man United.

We'll probably have to wait for Moyes' version of events and the truth will probably lie somewhere in between.

And does he really expect anyone to believe that Moyes' management style is any more ‘overbearing' and ‘controlling' than that of his current boss, the ever-so-genial Alex ‘Footloose and Fancy Free' Ferguson?

Get a grip lad…and grow up!

And for anyone that has forgotten just how mad the brothel story was, you can read it here: potnoodle!