GOODBYE, WAYNE. AND GOOD LUCK.
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

So, he’s gone.

Hands up anyone who was surprised, either at him going or at the reaction?

Nobody? Thought not.

And right at the start let’s all of us have the good grace to wish the gifted young man good luck in his future life. It is difficult to bear the loss but let’s not go along with the hate merchants – any of them – who have tried to exploit the whole sad episode for their own neurotic purposes. I doubt if we will see a young prospect like him again in our lifetime, One Of Us and a player of unmatched promise and potential. Yes, he has opted to take his abilities elsewhere but in the end that is his own free choice. Nobody should blame him because he chose to exercise it.

After that, let’s remember too that it’s Everton Football Club we support, not Rooney Football Club, or even Dixie Dean Football Club. Heroes come and go. Life goes on. Honest fans will know that that is the only loyalty on offer these days. Eventually the kids might realize that by and large it’s a waste of time having a player’s name on a shirt. Any of them at any club could be gone at any moment for any reason. No club anywhere on Earth is immune and I suggest you treat with disdain anybody who proposes otherwise. As I long ago forecast, the professional game is on the verge of becoming a troupe of performing athletes with interchangeable identity cloaks, but basically all cut from the same cloth.

The circumstances and the public relations/media circus hardly varies when something like this happens. Charge and counter charge fly around, rumour-mongers ply their tiresome schizoid melancholia and all of it in the end whirls away into an unfeeling nothingness. Inevitably, somewhere along the line, it spills over into the kind of ugly tribalism and mindless anger to which the human race seems eternally bound. Good and sensible men wince at the sorry sight. Only sado-masochists derive some form of satisfaction.

Of course the whole thing was handled badly by just about everybody. Then again, a transfer of this size was always going to be messy. The previous examples and dichotomies are endless – Sell him?! No, he’s our future! Sell him?! Yes, we need the money! But could we have kept him AND got enough money from another source? Probably, yes…………………if his relationship with David Moyes had been different. Moyesy was backed by Bill Kenwright, as he had to be. Wayne simply didn’t like Moyesy, so that was that. Understandably, he wanted out. Wouldn’t you in similar circumstances? After which point it became the usual dirty business of driving the best bargain available and trying to cut a dash with the media. What was the point of anyone denying him his wish to leave? Why stand in his way? Any serious student of events at the club knew what was happening as long ago as last February. We all kept hoping it might work its way through and sort itself out the way some relationship problems do. Enough goodwill on both sides would have been enough to set matters right. But it wasn’t to be. It takes two to tango. But some people never learn to dance. In this case they simply circled each other warily until the music stopped. Then it was time to go.

The most sickening thing of all has been the way the naïve young man has been manipulated by just about everybody inside and outside the club, some fans too. Nobody gets off scot-free. It is the nature of the contemporary beast. The more extreme of the fans have been nothing less than disgusting in their reactions to Wayne and just about everybody else. Fortunately the extremists have been very much in the minority. In the middle, the great mass of fans are either bewildered, sulky or merely impatient for the next game. As usual, understandably, most of them want nothing to do with internal “politics.” Sadly, the way the game is owned and administered these days they are left with little choice other than to do their own research and analysis and reach their own conclusions in that respect. The general situation forces it, as do some specific issues. If the game were more transparent there would be no need for much of that analysis to be based on guesstimates or, worse, rumour and media propaganda. And surely as we all know by now that will take a complete restructuring of the game. Don’t hold your breath.

The size of the deal was always going to be open to argument since barter value is always subjective, mostly notional and down to what can be thrashed out between two parties at any given moment. There isn’t much use quoting a transfer figure from over twelve months ago because the situation changes so quickly. Moreover, the so-called “market” has deflated. Who, for instance, could ever have envisaged an established world class player like Michael Owen being transferred for only £8 million, a mere one million more than Alan Smith, a player – though good in his own right – not fit to lace his boots? It’s the easiest thing in the world to get carried away by wild estimates, especially when a player is in a purple patch. Reality has a way of dowsing fanciful thoughts when it comes to face-to-face negotiations. Anybody who has been in such a situation will disabuse you of any such notions. Silly rhetoric has a way of vanishing like a snowflake in a forest fire.

It should go without saying that Wayne Rooney is not a “Judas” or a “traitor.” This is a young man of seemingly limitless potential, mostly an innocent abroad, and certainly manipulated by virtually everybody. I am willing to bet the inside of his head is in complete chaos, and in such disorder that when he settles down he is going to be even more merciless on the field than his promise. All that frustration and anger will have to go somewhere. At his coming peak he is likely to be absolutely incandescent. I hope he is, though I need hardly say I hope it isn’t against us. If it is, all those calling him “Judas” better get ready now for the kind of devastating response of which we all know he is more than capable. It could be a sight-and-a-half.

I said long ago that we should enjoy his play while he was with us. I didn’t then think he would go so quickly, not even when I knew of his differences with David Moyes. I thought he would be here until the end of this season, then move on. Deep down, I suspect that is the way a majority of Evertonians thought. It certainly squares with what many have said to me. But that’s modern footy life. You can rely on almost nothing. This isn’t, by the way, a statement of despair – it is a statement of fact. Contracts are worth next to nothing. Genuinely-meant promises can vanish in the heat of potential fame and fortune. He is just as likely suddenly to leave his new employers as he left us, though I venture to guess ruefully it is likely to be later rather than sooner. But, really, who knows? Remember Rio Ferdinand at Leeds and Jonathan Woodgate at Newcastle? What will constitute “good business” in twelve months time?

The money of course will leave us in a slightly better condition. However, it solves only the immediate condition and keeps the administration wolf from the door for the rest of the season. A further cash injection has arrived too late to supplement the squad and cannot help us players-wise until January, which means make-do-and-mend for the first half of the season. If we can keep away from playing disaster for the next four months then it might – MIGHT – see us climb to respectability by the end of the season. By respectability I mean around tenth position. In the meantime, footy being what it is, I also suspect some of last season’s surprise teams will be less surprising and those who quoted them as examples to follow will be every bit as embarrassed as the air-heads who told us the business plans of Leeds, Sunderland and Ipswich were the way forward.

Me, I wish young Wayne all the very best. He surely can’t avoid being a great player with whomever he ends up. He’s been through a lot during the last two years. And diamonds are made under great pressure. I hope he glitters for many more years yet.