Rooney still baffled by transfer request claim

Wayne Rooney claims he did not hand in a transfer request in 2013 but simply suggested to Sir Alex Ferguson that he should leave.

With wonderful naivety, Rooney is still confused about how his conversation with Ferguson was reported in the press as a transfer request.

It was the second time that Rooney had broached the subject of leaving United under Ferguson, with his stance in 2010 leading to a new contract.

“He was the reason why I wanted to join Man United, to work with him,” Rooney tells Gary Lineker in a new BBC documentary to be aired next week.

“In my eyes the best manager of all-time. For him to be interested in me and wanting me to play under him, there was nowhere else I was going to go.”

So what happened in 2013?

“I went in to see him (Ferguson) and just said ‘if you are not going to play me then it might be better for me to move on’.

“Then, all of a sudden, it was all over the press that I had put a transfer request in which I never did. I don’t know what happened, why that came out that way.”

Rooney is believed to have built bridges with Ferguson over the last two years and told Lineker: “It is not just me who has had a fall-out with Alex Ferguson. I think many players have. Some have left. Some have stayed.”