Everton don't need Wayne Rooney - and he's running out of options

They seem to represent diametrically different options in the summer. There is the financial decision and the emotional choice, the exotic destination in a far-flung land or the siren call of the familiarity of home. Just when Wayne Rooney seemed set to become Merseyside’s answer to Marco Polo, charting a course to China, came suggestions that Manchester United’s demoted captain would prefer to remain in England. Which, for many, means a return to Everton.

Consider Ronald Koeman’s October comments. “A great player… of course if there’s a possibility Rooney is an option for Everton, I’m very pleased,” the Dutchman said. Consider Bill Kenwright’s pronounced sentimental streak. The notion of the lifelong Everton fan back at Goodison Park is compelling. Once a Blue, always a Blue, even as the Red Devils’ record scorer.

Even Rooney’s greatest admirers, those who remained blinded to the decline that was all too apparent to others, ought to concede it is implausible a top-six club would want a player Manchester City tried to sign in 2010 and that Chelsea – then managed by Jose Mourinho – and Arsenal coveted in 2013.

Yet it is tempting to conclude Koeman was both playing to the gallery and trying to jolt Everton’s powerbrokers into the kind of transfer-market action that January brought. Perhaps a vanity signing now would appeal to owner Farhad Moshiri. It is harder to see the Moneyballing director of football Steve Walsh wanting to smash the wage ceiling for Rooney.

The most pertinent problem of all is the most obvious. Rooney should not get in the Everton team. Had he been at Goodison Park, he probably would not have done for some time. He rendered United’s forward line blunter, whereas Everton have a cutting edge with Romelu Lukaku: bigger, quicker and more prolific than Rooney, a potential Golden Boot winner. If Rooney arrives on a huge salary, expect Mino Raiola to demand a bigger one for Lukaku.

He would not even be the most compelling choice for the role of the local. Ross Barkley’s development would be affected if Rooney were granted preferential treatment. The younger Scouser can irritate, but he can captivate. One subjected to Koeman’s policy of tough love has responded and impressed in 2017. Moreover, Everton’s best No. 10 also has the mobility to play in a wider role in 3-4-3 or 4-3-3 formations and the Dutchman tends to like pace on the flanks.

Rooney was the future once. In Tom Davies and Ademola Lookman, Everton are looking to the future now. They have made a decisive break from their past in the last few weeks. In 2017, Koeman’s team have become younger and quicker. Rooney’s former England colleagues Phil Jagielka and Gareth Barry have lost their pace and their places. Everton have acquired more physical power and dynamism. It would be a regressive move to slow them down. It would make them a lesser proposition if Davies, Morgan Schneiderlin or Idrissa Gueye were dropped for a puffing presence.

The ageing Rooney is not just in search of a club, but a role. After six goals in 40 games for United, he scarcely has the potency to play in attack in a division increasingly marked by pace. There is the age-old theory he could become a midfielder, which Louis van Gaal and Roy Hodgson tested. But it isn’t just Rooney’s legs that have gone. It is his touch. There are moments – the thunderous goal against Fenerbahce, the inch-perfect record-breaking free kick at Stoke – when he looks to have timeless class in his right foot. They are too few, though. He is not Paul Scholes, a technician with perfect precision and unfailing vision. He does not have the patience to dictate play. He can play cross-field passes for the cameras, but too many of them are harmless.

And a man who helped define his era is a sign of the times. He could be priced out of a mid-table move. Five years ago, Stoke City were able to afford Michael Owen, a seeming coup that actually proved a predictable mismatch.

But now Rooney’s £300,000-a-week wages are so far beyond most clubs’ budget a repeat feels implausible. There was a suggestion recently that Rooney is the sixth best-paid footballer in the world. He is approximately the 20th-best player at the club sixth in the Premier League. And that is before suggestions a Chinese club would pay him £500,000 or £600,000 a week.

It should be an offer he does not refuse; while players understandably rage against the dying of the light, there should be a recognition from both Rooney and Gareth Southgate that, 16 months from the World Cup, he is extremely unlikely to go to Russia.

But if patriotism, family reasons or a fear of the unknown prompts him to stay in England, there is one option. Even with United presumably subsidising his wages, it would involve a sizeable pay cut and possibly a drop of a division, but first-team football would be guaranteed. It would not be Goodison Park or Old Trafford, but it might bear certain similarities to both. He would almost certainly be welcomed into David Moyes’ ever more comprehensive Everton and United reunion project at Sunderland. And if that thought doesn’t make him move to China, perhaps nothing will.