In defence of Wayne Rooney

The ‘news’, if you can call it that, that Wayne Rooney was spotted at a wedding having apparently enjoyed a few drinks is a load of nonsense purely designed to fill space in newspapers.

When it is three or four days before the next game it’s not the biggest crime in the world, and Rooney was ruled out of the Spain match due to injury in any case. The FA would have been better off staying quiet about this; instead, chief executive Martin Glenn is talking about how a “disappointing” incident “doesn’t set a great tone for the England captain.”

The Football Association is also said to be furious and considering enforcing strict curfews on England players, but it is a total overreaction. Give me a break.

There is too much being read into this, too much scrutiny being applied to the situation. I actually think this kind of thing happens quite a lot when footballers are staying in hotels and the people who are involved love it. What is really important is what happens on the pitch.

Admittedly that hasn’t been going well for Rooney either, but this is an unimportant sideshow.

Things haven’t been great for him over the past year but footballers should still be allowed to go out and enjoy themselves. If anyone took offence then that is another thing, but I’m sure the wedding guests didn’t mind Wayne Rooney being there.

The one mistake he maybe did make was not doing it in private. If he needed to let loose and relax after all the criticism he has had this season then maybe go somewhere where you aren’t going to be filmed.

If you are a player for Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland or Ireland you’ve always had more flexibility on the social side of things because they are treated as adults. With England, the FA has got more and more controlling.

Bobby Robson used to allow us to drive to Wembley on the morning of the game and leave our cars in the car park of the Hilton if we were playing an international there. When the match finished you’d jump behind the wheel, while some people had drivers to take them home.

But when Graham Taylor turned up, everything changed: suddenly we all had to get picked up by FA staff in cars. It was his way of controlling what the players were doing.

In my time, despite the myths of the big-drinking culture, there wasn’t much of a big social scene. People would generally go home to their own parts of the country after matches. And despite what the papers would have you believe about Rooney, I think the same is still true today.

Sometimes England players should know better, admittedly, but they are grown men. The only difference now is that there is far more scrutiny. The fact footballers are being paid huge amounts makes them targets and in the age of the smartphone there is no hiding place, especially if you’ve been tinkling the ivories at a wedding.

There are some players who will abuse the trust placed in them but the important thing is only what happens on the pitch. People want to know that Wayne Rooney is turning things around in terms of his form, not this nonsense which is just being used to sell newspapers.

I don’t think Manchester United can do anything to Rooney – and nor should they. I don’t want to see them go down the road of issuing statements in response to stories like this.

And with Zlatan Ibrahimovic suspended, I think Rooney has to start up front against Arsenal on Saturday. Mourinho isn’t bothered about his centre-forward getting in behind all the time so it doesn’t matter so much that Rooney lacks the dynamism of old.

That’s the position in which he became a Manchester United great and now people will want to see if he can still cut it. If he scores against Arsenal, no one is going to be remotely bothered if he gatecrashed a wedding.