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By comparison, Jose Mourinho was a painfully self-obsessed attention-grabber as he threw his jacket and medal into the crowd, but then let’s try to be scrupulously fair.. Rooney scored a hat-trick yesterday. Unfortunately for England those five words do not herald a miraculous recovery by Wayne but three goals for his namesake, Adam, of Stoke, who beat Brighton 5-1 during the final thrusts of the Championship season yesterday. The champions trampled just about every club in their path and then, in a final act of closure, demolished United 3-0 on Saturday to claim the title..

Beyond the shock and the pain of Wayne Rooney’s injury, there was a football match of some importance to consider, one that might just have been speaking about not the end of one Premiership campaign but the start of the next one. As for his team, the victory scarcely impacted upon Chelsea’s remorseless progress. 6 November, 2005: with victory at Old Trafford, Manchester United halt Chelsea’s unbeaten run in the Premiership that stretches for 40 matches and more than a year. The nation gasps – is this day to be a historic point in the course of English football?

Only in the sense that on that day Sir Alex Ferguson said the phrase “absolute bollocks” live on national television for the first time in his disputatious career. Rooney was out of the World Cup; that, you dreaded in your bones, was the terrible reality First folly, now catastrophe, and where will it end?.

Embarrassment over the cosmic bungling of the Scolari affair had been replaced by something to strike at the heart of the sports nation. Now our fear was that we faced something resembling a biblical curse. It’s not long ball, it’s never been long ball and it never will be.”. It was already as if someone had been walking through English football switching off the lights one by one and then suddenly Wayne Rooney was lying on the Stamford Bridge pitch crying out in acute pain.

But if Michael Owen was playing up front I would play differently. The level playing field that I would be on – above most international teams with the quality players I’ve got – would mean we would go to outplay them and beat them.”I don’t play on a level playing field in the Premiership because my resources are fewer than most and I have an effective way with the group of players I’ve got. Barwick had called McClaren, Sam Allardyce, Martin O’Neill and Alan Curbishley on Friday to apologise that the choice of Scolari had been leaked and to tell them that no contract had been signed. Hours later, after Scolari made his announcement live on television that he was no longer interested in taking the England job, Barwick called all four candidates and told them they were back in the frame.
McClaren was hit yesterday with further tabloid revelations about his affair with a Boro employee, but it is understood that they are unlikely to affect his chances of landing the job.Allardyce made one last bid for the job yesterday, saying: “I’ve always said right from the start, it’s my dream job and I believe I’d be very good at doing it at this stage of my life.”Allardyce gave an insight into his tactics if he were to be appointed national boss.He said: “If I had Peter Crouch up front at 6ft 7in then I’d play where his strength lies, like we do [with] Kevin Davies at Bolton. The FA chief executive, Brian Barwick, and his four colleagues charged with finding the new manager had long settled upon McClaren as the first alternative to Scolari. The Football Association is understood to be days away from appointing Steve McClaren as the successor to Sven Goran Eriksson after the collapse of its approach to Luiz Felipe Scolari. “Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that Wayne does go to the World Cup.