The Wayning

He sat there on the edge of the bed in his y-fronts and socks, looking out at the pale moon.

‘Don’t worry about it dear.’

He didn’t turn around, didn’t look at her.

‘These things happen.’

‘It’s never happened to me before,’ he sniffled.

She shuffled across the bed and placed her hand on his.

‘Alex, you should have known that time he sent me that text, you can’t trust him. Don’t worry, Bebe.’

***

End of an era? When you consider the loss of Scholes, Giggs, Ferdinand and now Rooney, all in the next year and half, it’s undeniable. It will be the end of an era. The question is can Ferguson rebuild the team after this crop of talent depart? The players required are out there, playing for Aston Villa, Spurs and Everton, but can United afford them? It has been suggested that, should Rooney leave, the Glazers will have to invest in a major player to keep revenues coming into the club at their current rate. This has to be the case: should they not invest, the club’s value will depreciate and they will in effect be in negative equity, paying off the vast loan they took out for a club worth less than they paid for it. Purely on business terms they will reinvest, but will it be enough money to fully restock the club?

Concerns have arisen that the necessary long-term planning would see Ferguson thinking well beyond his own retirement, and that he might not have the energy to oversee this kind of change again. Much of what has been uttered about United’s fate in the last few days’ press has been brewing for the last year; the Rooney revelation has merely lit the touch paper.

There is something of more universal concern reverberating beneath all this for all Premier League lovers. Another star may be tempted to move across the channel, in the footballing equivalent of continental drift, southwards to warmer climes, lower taxes and the increasingly star-studded squads of the Spanish Two. Are we seeing a tectonic shift in the make-up and influence of a Premier League that could conceivably lose Fabregas, Rooney and Torres by the summer?

~ Ed