What seems remarkable now is how uncontroversial the issue of Wayne Rooney’s departure from Manchester United has come to feel. This is, after all, a player who started United’s first five league games of the season, a run of games that suggested he was a first-choice. Perhaps José Mourinho really did see him as such, or maybe he was playing a clever political game, but either way Rooney has faded to the extent that the suggestion he will start Sunday’s EFL Cup final against Southampton on the bench provokes little comment.
There is a tendency to portray Mourinho as a great Machiavellian spider, forever spinning his webs of intrigue, never doing anything without some ulterior motive. But, if his aim this season was to prove that Rooney is not good enough for a place in the first team and to shuffle him without fuss out of the door, then he has succeeded magnificently.
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