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Jose Mourinho Reveals Whether Manchester United Will Sell Wayne Rooney

By Gregory Wakeman
Published on: 23:11 PST, Oct 28, 2016

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has emphatically denied speculation that the club is going to sell captain Wayne Rooney.

The 31-year-old’s future at Old Trafford has been the topic of much discussion over the last few weeks after he was dropped to the Manchester United bench for their game against Leicester City on Saturday, September 24. Rooney has not started the three Premier League games since then, while he has recently been recovering from an injury set back too.

Because of Rooney’s problems, there have been repeated rumors that Manchester United and Jose Mourinho might consider selling him, with Everton being linked to his purchase. However Mourinho emphatically dismissed this speculation, insisting that Rooney is still a key figure for the club.

According to the BBC, when Mourinho was quizzed about Rooney’s possible departure from Old Trafford at a press conference on Friday, he insisted that the player is “going nowhere.” These press reports emerged after it was alleged that Mourinho had told Rooney that he would need to leave Old Trafford in order to have regular first-team football.

But Mourinho was adamant that Wayne Rooney still has a key role to play at Old Trafford, even though he has most recently been resigned to the substitute’s bench.

“[Rooney] is a top player, a very important player for us,” Mourinho continued. “He is going nowhere – we like him, he likes us. He’s not happy because he’s been on the bench but he is even unhappier when he’s injured.”

Jose Mourinho was pragmatic about why reports of Rooney’s potential departure had emerged, as he quipped that the press had fabricated the story just to sell papers.

“There is no problem at all,” Mourinho insisted. “But you need stories to sell papers.”

Mourinho then used this as an opportunity to declare that he was misquoted earlier in the week, after he told Sky Sports that living alone in Manchester while his wife and two children are still situated in London had become “a bit of a disaster.”

“You write lies,” Mourinho explained. “Even about myself when I say it’s a disaster because every time I leave the hotel I have somebody chasing me, you say my life is a disaster. You can write what you want but many times it is not true.”

The Sun was the first to insist that Jose Mourinho had told the Manchester United captain that he would need to leave Old Trafford if he wanted regular football. These stories regarding Rooney’s potential departure led to Everton boss Ronald Koeman being asked whether he’d want Rooney to return to Goodison Park.

The Dutch manager admitted that he’d be interested in acquiring Rooney, but insisted that he wasn’t sure what his current situation was at Old Trafford. According to the BBC, Koeman responded to questions over whether he might try to sign Rooney with, “He is a great player, and he has still not finished his career.”

But he then added, “I do not know how his situation is, and I need to respect that situation. That’s not my problem. But even when we get one time the possibility that Rooney is an option for Everton, I’m very pleased.”

Despite his current problems, Wayne Rooney’s career at Manchester United has been a huge success since he arrived from Everton for £27 million at the age of 18 in 2004. Wayne Rooney has not only scored 246 goals in 532 games for Manchester United, which leaves him just three strikes shy of equaling Bobby Charlton as the club’s leading goalscorer, but he has also won the UEFA Champions League, the FIFA Club World Cup, five Premier League titles, the Football League Cup twice, and the FA Cup once, too.

[Featured Image by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images]

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