Dear Wayne,
Before you make the next move in this game of chess being played out with the media, think carefully.
Think about whether you really want to leave Manchester United.
We’re reading that “behind closed doors” you’re telling your team mates that you want to join City. Money is undoubtedly a factor, but the instigator is supposedly the breakdown in your relationship with Sir Alex Ferguson.
What has really caused this breakdown? Is it anything Sir Alex himself did, or is it his reaction to your own actions? If so, maybe, turning 25 this week should perhaps knock a bit of sense into you. You’re no longer able to blame your stubbornness on the belligerence of youth. Supporters can’t defend your indiscretions citing immaturity. And it’s because of this inability to defend you anymore that you seemingly are turning not only against the club but against the one person who has gone beyond the call of duty and at times sacrificed his own reputation to defend you.
You need to take responsibility one way or the other. Come out and say you want to stay, or that you want to leave.
We, the fans, will not only respect you a lot more, but we will know what’s going on, then. If you want to stay, then great. United supporters have a great tradition of rallying around heroes who have supposedly fallen off of their pedestal. Eric Cantona for Selhurst. Roy Keane and Rio Ferdinand for their contract “negotiation tactics”. You yourself, and Cristiano Ronaldo, in 2006 after the World Cup. Remember the way we took you both back in and supported you. We’re ready to back you.
If you want to leave, then be honest and say so, but a word of warning. Be honest with yourself. Blaming Sir Alex is putting the blame where it is least deserved. Even after your actions, he stood by you, and was giving you a break to sort out your life. He did that for your own good, for the benefit of your personal life, despite the effect your absence might have on the team. Attributing blame to anyone else is pure cowardice. If you want more money, if you really think being able to make a million pounds in a few weeks is not enough, when most of the world can only dream of that sum in a lifetime, then at least be honest enough to admit it. Don’t put the blame onto someone who has done everything to protect you and has helped you, sometimes in spite of yourself, achieve things in the game you could not have achieved anywhere else. You owe him so much, but the least you owe him is to not make him the villain in the piece. You owe it to him to publically state he has done everything to help you, but you want to leave.
But before you do that, think further still. Think of how you have done yourself no favours, and who else would go to such lengths to protect you. Who else would show the faith in you to come good. If you need an example, look at Paul Gascoigne. A player with the hopes and dreams of the country on his back, who struggled to cope, and whose career, then life, went to waste. A player who openly regrets turning his back on Sir Alex and United when he had the opportunity. Look at what happened to him without the right guidance and advice, and wonder if you really want to turn your back on all that you currently have? What good is money if your life goes to pot?
If you get your wish and you leave United, who will be there to help you next time – and, if this is your chosen path, and you’re absolving yourself of responsibility, then there will be a next time – you hit on hard times? There is no-one in any place that you think you will be able to go that will be able to protect you as much as Sir Alex does. And what effect will that have on your family? Once you leave the protection of United, you will be truly putting yourself in the goldfish bowl. Sure, you’ll be flavour of the month again for a short time. But when the initial furore wanes, and you find yourself in trouble again, the knives will be out, but you will have alienated those that matter in the game.
No-one at United wants you to leave. You’re part of the family. Even when Cristiano was getting the plaudits in 2007/08 and scoring the goals, we still recognised you as the heartbeat of the team. It was fitting that you scored the goal to crown us as World Champions. When you were booed by England fans and when the press panned you after South Africa and Germany, who were the fans backing you? After all your recent problems, who were the supporters still chanting your name for 70 minutes on Saturday, wanting your introduction, despite there clearly being something not right? We were. We stood by you, even though most of us disagreed with a passion with what you did. It went against what we believed as people, but we stood by you. Think about what you are doing to that relationship.
What happens to players after they leave United? Those who choose not to sign for us when they get the chance? Those who go on to bigger and better things are in a minority. Beckham? No. Ruud? No. Stam? No. Keane? No. Even Cristiano? Not at this stage. He’s learning the grass isn’t always greener, that other supporters aren’t quite as faithful or loyal as United supporters.
After all this, you still have a chance to put it right. You have two months before January, to put the rumours to rest. You can make a statement publically. You can do your talking on the pitch. Take that chance. Look at Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes. Look at Sir Bobby Charlton. Your chance to sit alongside them, to smash the goalscoring records, to notch this chapter as a minor hiccup, is in your hands. What does it matter, when you make as much money as you do, for an extra million here or there, when there is a chance of real footballing history? Stay at United and you will undoubtedly become our top scorer of all time. The top scorer of all time for the biggest club in the world? Surely that was one of things running through your mind in the playground?
If you come out now and state your desire to remain at United for the rest of your career – like you have in the past – then you will retain hero status before the press manage to wrestle it away from you in your silence.
But make no mistake, Wayne. United will move on with or without you. If you do move, it will be you who lives to regret it.
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